Re: [Rails-devel] Making Rails more suited to fast interactive play.

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

I have committed phase one of the AutoSave/Load feature.

It works as follows:

1. First player:
1a. Start game
1b. Select File | AutoSave/Load, and select On.  You can also change the
polling interval. Press OK.
1c. You will get the standard Save popup.  Here you can navigate to the
autosave/load directory (e.g. Dropbox) you want to use. 
[in a later version you will also be able to change the Prefix, which is
everything in front of the first underscore in the filename. Normally the
prefix only contains the game name, but you can put anything there, for
instance a code like 1830A1, as some zines do to distinguish actual games.]
1d. Do your moves, until the end of your turn. Then the game will be saved
automatically. You will see some fields deactivate (turn white), but I
haven't yet made that consistent (in fact, I have only tested with the 1830
StartRound yet).
1e. When it is your turn again, a (non-modal) popup comes up, and you will
see the appropriate fields in the active window get reactivated.
[I'll probably make this configurable later, and add a configurable beep
too].

2. Other players:
2a. Load the game saved by the first player.
2b. Same as 1b.
2c. Same as 1c. This step is completely redundant, and will be removed in a
later stage (at the point where this happens, the code does not know how the
game was started. This needs be added). For now, please just click OK. 
2d/e. Same as 1d/e.

The procedure for the other players (2a-e) is a bit awkward. I plan to
change this later so, that any subsequent player only needs to load the
<prefix>.last_rails file that contains the name of the last saved file.
AutoSave/Load would then be started automatically. The goal is to merge
steps 2a-2b into one (and remove 2c).
 
If you want a first look, please give it a try.

Erik.

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Rick Westerman [mailto:wes...@pu...]
> Verzonden: vrijdag 18 maart 2011 17:28
> Aan: Development list for Rails: an 18xx game
> Onderwerp: Re: [Rails-devel] Making Rails more suited to fast interactive
> play.
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > Each to their own of course, just providing my personal opinions :)
> >
> > I think we can generally agree that intrusiveness is bad (since if you
> > are using it real-time, you are paying attention anyway ...
> 
>    Actually that is not, at least in my case, totally true.  While I'll
keep Rails
> open on one screen on my other screen I'll be checking email, surfing the
> web, or even trying to figure out the Rails code and how to modify it.
:-)
> Some sort of notification -- audible or flashing of the screen, or even a
pop-
> up to catch the corner of my eye -- is handy.  Otherwise I have to
manually
> check the status.    Of course for people who don't want the popup then it
> should be able to be turned off.
> 
>    In many ways this is like email or twitter or IM.  You don't want to be
glued
> to your email/twitter/IM screen waiting for the next message.  On the
other
> hand you often want to be notified in a timely manner that something is
> happening -- thus a pop or something on the notification bar is desired.
Yet
> there are also times when you just want to drop out and not be notified
that
> a new message is waiting for you.
> 
>    Basically I think that we all agree that if there are popups
implemented then
> they should be able to be toggled.  I just do not want to see the idea of
> popups disappear entirely.
> 
> -- Rick
> 
> 
>
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