Re: [Rails-devel] Making Rails more suted to fast interactive play. Was [18xx] Programing a Windows 18XX Moderator

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

 
> Van: Rick Westerman [mailto:wes...@pu...]  Ideally a turn
> would look like:
>
>      1) Rails notifies you that it is your turn; e.g. through a
> flashing icon on the rails window, via a taskbar flashing, audio, etc.
>      5) You start off with current data (i.e., Rails has automatically
> loaded in the game file) in front of you; do buy/sells as desired.
>      6) You click the 'done/save' button

This should not be too difficult to do. The trigger would not be any button,
but just a change of who has the turn. 
Every, say, 30 seconds Rails could check for new files, load these, and
display the results. A popup would signal your next turn.

I'll try to write down a more detailed specification shortly.

> Van: John A. Tamplin [mailto:ja...@ja...] I am just saying storing
> files on a server and picking them up, loading and processing the file,
saving
> the file, etc is highly inefficient for running a distributed game,
compared to
> all clients seeing all the actions from the server as they happen and
getting
> notification directly that it is your turn rather than waiting for dropbox
to
> replicate the save file, Rails noticing the file is updated (which is also
> problematic to notice when replication is complete to avoid reading a
partially
> replicated file), and replaying all the actions in the game to get to the
state
> for the next turn, etc.

It isn't that bad: the game isn't replayed. All Reload does is checking if
the saved actions are identical to those in the local processed-actions
stack. Only new actions are processed. 

Of course I agree that true client/server would be a lot more efficient. But
if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to see that completed.  
If fairly simple features like Reload and Autosave/load (my proposed name of
the new feature) enable Rails users to achieve near-real time play, I'm all
for it to implement these first.

Erik.