DEBUG: Pbem?

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
If it passes 'in-house' testing satisfactorily, would anyone be interested in a trial PBEM game to search out new problems (I'd upload a new playtest version)?

Of course!

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
In any case, upon investigation, I discovered that there was already in place a system for postponing the science dialog until the next player began their turn - it just wasn't working properly due to one minor error. So I've fixed that, and it works fine under hotseat, but I forgot to test it under PBEM.

Might this postponing of the science window also possible for postponing the diplo window. To do human-human-diplomacy something is needed to make the diplo-proposal popup when the addressed player's turn start. That should be stored in something like a queue. As the proposal can be called by a slic event only the event and the arguments must be stored. At least something like this was the idea of the fix attempt.

-Martin

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Might this postponing of the science window also possible for postponing the diplo window. To do human-human-diplomacy something is needed to make the diplo-proposal popup when the addressed player's turn start. That should be stored in something like a queue. As the proposal can be called by a slic event only the event and the arguments must be stored. At least something like this was the idea of the fix attempt.

Quite possibly.

The delay is instituted through the SLIC engine (which seems like a strange choice, but I guess it was a way to get the information into the savegame easily).

As to doing something similar with diplomacy, I guess that it would be necessary to add more similar info to the SLIC engine class (which might cause backwards-compatibility issues...) and then altering the way the diplomacy window works so that it can store proposals and resume them rather than concluding them all at once.

Not an insurmountable task, but probably not trivial either.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Of course!

OK, thanks . I've got a couple of loose ends to tie up and then I think it might be time to try a 'real' game.

[J Bytheway]

What opinions do people have on the format of the PBEM save game name?

At present it's:

CTP2 Email To email (Turn turn-number)

...but if there's one thing I've learnt from playing CTP PBEM, it's that players come and go, and even when they don't, email addresses still change, so it's silly to have the email address permanantly fixed into the filename.

One possibile fix is to introduce some way of altering the emails as the game goes on. This is what I'd most like, but I don't know how best to go about it. My gut tells me to extend SLIC to be able to access and alter the emails and also to be able to procure textual input from the user, and then implement the feature through SLIC, or at least using the same routines directly from the source. Unfortunately, I wouldn't know how to do this offhand.

Another possibility is to not put the email in the game name (indeed, not bother with emails at all in CTP2 - let the user worry about them), and use rather the player name of civ name. This also has the advantage that it prevents problems if two players have the same email (they are both living in the same household, for example).

Another aspect of this issue is that the format of the save game name should not be hardcoded, it should be exposed in the text files somehow. Again my gut tells me this would be best done through SLIC for maximum flexibility, but that may be excessive, and perhaps just a string with escape sequences which are replaced by various texts at save time as appropriate. For example, the template for the current format could be:

CTP2 Email To %e (Turn %t)

In this case, what character should be used for the escapes. I used % here, but for consistency it might be better, perhaps, to try and match the sort of templating used in the GL.

Even if the format is exposed in this way, we still need to choose a sensible default. The most significant choice (IMHO) is what order to put the different components. If the turn number appears before the email (or other player-identifying string) then when the files are sorted alphabetically they will appear roughly in the order they were played, but if these sections appear the other way around then the turns will be sorted first by player, and then by turn number. I've become used to this latter state of affairs in playing CTP PBEM, but does anyone have a good reason to favour the former?

(It's amazing what a big deal I can make out of a seemingly trivial issue .)

Any opinions?

[Maquiladora]

It would definitely be useful to be able to change emails or players names through the game. Maybe a "Player Setup" tab under options only for hotseat or PBEM games. This kind of in-game info could also be used to see what humans are controlling what civs, so you can PM or email them privately, without having to ask for an updated playerlist on the forum so you know whos who.

I dont see any reason not to have the email in the file name if we will be able to edit it in the middle of a game. For possible double email addresses then maybe we should include the player name like "CtP2 PBEM to Maquiladora (Email Address) - Turn #"

For the order of the parts of the name it doesnt make any difference, just sort them by date if you want them in order. I think its easier to spot a save if the player name or email is nearer the beginning, if the turn # were nearer someone might double-click the wrong turn, well its a possibility.

I dont really like the idea of exposing the format, then we might get games where everyone chooses a different format and it would be annoying to sort the saves after the game or for a moderator to sift through, things like that.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I dont see any reason not to have the email in the file name if we will be able to edit it in the middle of a game. For possible double email addresses then maybe we should include the player name like "CtP2 PBEM to Maquiladora (Email Address) - Turn #"

Yes - that would probably be fine.

For the order of the parts of the name it doesnt make any difference, just sort them by date if you want them in order.

Good point .

I think its easier to spot a save if the player name or email is nearer the beginning, if the turn # were nearer someone might double-click the wrong turn, well its a possibility.

Well, I've sent the wrong turn before even in the present system, so we shouldn't do anything to make matters worse!

I dont really like the idea of exposing the format, then we might get games where everyone chooses a different format and it would be annoying to sort the saves after the game or for a moderator to sift through, things like that.

I see your point. Of course, with the source code anyone could make the the format anything they want anyway, but most people would not bother to go that far.

If we did allow variable name format, I guess it would be better to save the format in the game so all saves for that one game look the same, which should make the moderators job simpler (especially if they start the game and choose the format they like ). But I'll take any excuse to avoid work, so I think I'll leave it hardcoded for now.

[J Bytheway]

Just a note to say I haven't forgotten about this - I just got rather sidetracked by the svn server issue. Hopefully that will soon be sorted out and normal service can resume. I still want to get PBEM working properly .

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Just a note to say I haven't forgotten about this -

Never thought so

[J Bytheway]

Just bumping this thread to remind myself that this issue still needs to be dealt with...

[Maquiladora]

What else is there to fix here John, besides the diplomacy?

[J Bytheway]

Well, I was referring to PBEM in general, rather than anything in particular. I *hope* that diplomacy is all that's left to fix. I would also like to allow alteration of player emails in mid game as mentioned above.

[Maquiladora]

Would it be possible to have only 2 players? When i select 2 it defaults to 3.

Also theres the battle reporting for the next player, not something really to fix but can something like in CtP1 be done?

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Would it be possible to have only 2 players? When i select 2 it defaults to 3.

Really? I thought I'd got that working properly... I'll take a look.

Also theres the battle reporting for the next player, not something really to fix but can something like in CtP1 be done?

Well, it should be SLICabble, but perhaps a source-code solution might be better.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Really? I thought I'd got that working properly... I'll take a look.

I see what happened - it was working when you started a PBEM or hotseat game, but not an SP game. It's fixed now in svn, and with luck I'm about to upload a playtest in which it works.