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

[Chris S. <chr...@gm...>]

Yeah, we tried that, but renaming the file doesn't "touch" the timestamp in
Linux.

Good system though.  What I'm hoping is that eventually we can get it to
push updates to the other players' clients, so we can play near-realtime
online.

--
Chris

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On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Jim Black <jim...@ya...> 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
>
>
>
>
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