Re: [Rails-devel] using dropbox

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

Hi Jim,

Good to hear that Internet play can so easily be accomodated with Rails!

Some news for you and everyone: in the past year I have been working on
1856,
and it has recently been finished. 
The source code is available in the current code base.
In my opinion, a new release (1.0.7) can be prepared pretty soon.

Before that, I will have another look at the bugs list and see what can be
done about it. 
A while ago I already reported that I couldn't reproduce some of the bug
reports from early this year.

I have noticed some new ones, including your report on 1830 brown shares. 
I can already say, that AFAIK there is a consensus that multiple brown
shares 
can only be bought from the Pool, not from IPO. 
So that's why it is as it is.

To play otherwise would require a new selectable game option.
I'm willing to consider a feature request to add such an option, 
but it wouldn't be a high priority item.

Best regards,
Erik.

> I've been playing 18xx pbem using rails and and a dropbox, with the  
> person who posted on BGG.
> 
> Here's a quick overview of what dropbox does for us, in tandem with  
> rails-
> 
> First, dropbox essentially it gives you a shared folder 'in the  
> cloud'- it looks like a local/desktop folder, but gets automatically  
> sync'd across everyone.  (www.getdropbox.com)
> 
> No saving attachments and forwarding along- we save directly to the  
> dropbox, from rails.  (As I mentioned, it looks like a local drive.)
> 
> We see a shared record of the game.
> 
> We use a java runtime option to coerce timestamps into UTC 
> format, so  
> the default Rails filenames all sequence properly across timezones.
> 
> Also, dropbox supports notifications- I see popup 
> notifications on my  
> mac, via growl- so, we don't even really need to email each 
> other when  
> we move (though we typically do).  Instead, we use a reserved/ 
> placeholder file in a game folder (a 'token'), that we update 
> to name  
> the next player.
> 
> It works quite well- I get notifications of someone's move from  
> dropbox, long before I usually get the email.  I quickly notice any  
> game activity, and immediately can see if it's my move in any 
> current  
> game(s)- it's also easy to review the 'current player' across 
> a bunch  
> of games simultaneously.  And, of course, I get a lot less 
> unnecessary  
> email noise and corrections, from the pbem.
> 
> Rails has been working well!  We've stumbled into some bugs 
> (which we  
> filed), but overall it's very simple and easy to use.
> 
> - jim