Re: [Rails-devel] Simultaneous loading of a game

[Jim B. <jim...@ya...>]

PS.  My (d) item was a little incomplete, below.   That is, we have an  
archive sub-folder within each game folder- periodically we just  
select a bunch of the oldest "recent moves", and move them all into  
that subfolder.  So, the housekeeping is pretty easy, and we browse  
fairly short lists of [only] recent moves during typical play/etc.

On Nov 9, 2009, at 10:06 AM, Jim Black wrote:

>
> On Nov 9, 2009, at 9:32 AM, Chris Shaffer wrote:
>
>> If you can coordinate each user loading the new saved game, I suspect
>> you could effect a sort of low-tech networked play.
>>
>> Yeah, that's effectively what we have now.  We save and append the  
>> next player's name to the save file, they see dropbox update the  
>> file and see their name in the filename and know its their turn.
>
> works like that here too, but here's the save protocol we use  
> (similar, but different) -
>
> a) use UTC option so timestamps sequence properly
> b) each player appends his-own-name to the save-file ('-jb', or  
> whatever)
>
> c) there's an empty file in the folder, representing the "current  
> player" token.  whenever someone moves, they update this empty file,  
> and rename it to point to the next player.
>
> d) we also have an "archive" subfolder for each game folder,
>
> Other details:
> i.  This approach for initialing your own save-file ((b), above),  
> makes it easier to find/identify particular saved moves.
> ii.  To supplement (b) and (d) for the game archive, I also drop  
> other empty/placeholder files in the folder, as bookmarks for the SR/ 
> OR transitions.
> iii.  All these files are named appropriately (with the game  
> prefix), so that they all sequence in folder-browsing (from Rails,  
> from browsing folders externally, etc), with the "current move"  
> token at the very end.
> iv.  Thus, I can always & quickly browse the current folders in my  
> dropbox (one per active game), see a short listing of the recent  
> moves for each, with the "current player" named at the end.
>
> In this way, we get a decent archive (easy to browse the archive  
> subfolder, and identify key phases too- sr2, or3.1, etc), the  
> current-player signaling stuff ("token files") remains separate from  
> the .rails move stuff ("save files"), and notifications are easily  
> both "pushed" (by dropbox notifications when a move or token is  
> updated), and "pulled" (naming and archive conventions that make the  
> folders very quick to browse, to review current game states).
>
> Anyway, I thought I'd share this in case any of its helpful to you.
>
> -  jim
>
>