Re: [Rails-devel] [18xx] Rails (was: Web-based 18xx)

[brett l. <wak...@gm...>]

Moving this thread over to the appropriate list....   ;-)


On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Erik Vos <eri...@hc...> wrote:
>> But all considered what I would really like to see, are
>> online play capabilities added to Rail for remote real time playing.
>> That would be a real breakthrough in the hobby.
>
> Online play is certainly in scope for Rails, but I can't tell when it will
> happen.
> I'm currently the only (somewhat) active developer, and these days other
> hobby and non-hobby activities take most of my time.
>
> I'm actually on a crossroads as how to proceed with Rails. I could first
> work towards completion of some half-done games (1856, 1835, 1870) in the
> current (hot-seat only) version (earlier this year some interest in 1856 has
> surfaced). That is the easy road.
>
> I could also start working towards a version that would allow on-line play
> in some form or shape. As we already have a complete graphical interface
> programmed in Java, the simplest approach might be to split the existing
> system in a client and a server part (in fact, I already have been gradually
> working towards such a split for the last 2 years, but it is far from done).
> For the user interface this could lead to either a Java client program, to
> be installed on local PCs, or a Java applet, that could be accessed over the
> Web. However, Java applets are notorious for their long download and
> initialization times, so I don't know if working with such an applet would
> be an appealing foresight for many people.
>

My preference would be to finish off the games we've partially
implemented, get a "base" set of games into a playable state, and then
move on to doing the client/server split.

However, if you're eager to move on to more interesting work, we can
always come back to adding more games later. ;-)


> There are several ways in which a local client program could communicate
> with a central server. One perhaps unusual way could be near-real time
> communication via SMTP/POP3 (e-mail) - this way we could have PBEM as an
> extra bonus. Not sure if other communication methods are so easy as they
> sound - having a server listening on an Internet port has security
> implications that I can't assess - I'm a novice in that matter.
>

If we want to leverage some existing code, for the "near realtime"
communication, XMPP (aka. Jabber) is a more appropriate protocol. I
believe there are a few different existing libraries we can leverage
for the communications, which could save us a TON of work.

We should consider SMTP to be for PBEM only.  To be honest, the PBEM
component can be as simple as dropping the saved game file into an
e-mail, and passing around the saved game files.  There's a PBEM
Diplomacy client that does basically this. It connects to your mail
server and just looks for specially formatted e-mails, and loads the
contents into the game engine.

> Apologies to those who find this post a bit too technical. The technical
> details can better be discussed in the Sourceforge Rails maillist, or in the
> 18xx-softdev Yahoo group. But I'm now mainly interested in thoughts on the
> general line of development that Rails might take in the near future.
>
> Erik.
>
>

---Brett.