RE: [Rails-devel] Saving and logging.

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

All agreed, except one minor point:

> I've been thinking about the game-save and game requirements, 
> and it seems
> to me
> that these are best served by a single solution: All the 
> user's funtional
> input,
> e.g. "Fred buys a B&O share", "PRR lays a #9 on H14/ew" 
> should be saved in a
> replayable log. This log could be held in memory 

Why not written to a file immediately?
Granted that Windows does not crash that often these days,
but why take the risk?

> until the 
> user decides to
> save
> the game. This log could then be passed to the next player in 
> a PBEM game,
> or just
> used to reload a saved state after closing the program.
> 
> Advantages are:
> 
>  - PBEM and local user game saves solved by the same code.
>  - No need to overload implementation code with state save/load code.
>  - Easy debugging: "I did the following (log attached), and 
> the program did
> the wrong thing."
>  - Easy testing: Once you've debugged the previous case, you 
> can replay the
> game, and see
>    that the code works properly. Whole test suites and 
> regression tests can
> be built from this.
>  - If everyone in a PBEM game mails the log after their turn 
> to everyone
> else, cheating becomes
>    impossible, since if you alter the log, any other player 
> can diff your
> version against their
>    last one, and see what change you've made.
> 
> I would, of course, strongly favour using an XML format for 
> saving this
> data.

Like:
<action actor_type="company" actor="PRR">
  <tile_lay tile="9" location="H14" orientation="SW">
</action>

etc.?



Erik.