Mini game to scrach some itch?:)

[thegrime]

The Mini-games forum is now active. Corbeau and morphles are the moderators.

[morphles]

By the way grime, wana play?:)
I also sent some emails (using forum) to some GT old timers.

[thegrime]

Unfortunately, time is not on my side at the moment (especially for the next 30 days). Big things happening at work, and not much time for much else. Even checking in on the forum will be a once-a-day thing at most.

But let me know if you need anything and I'll see what I can provide!

[Corbeau]

A server?

Or, as I proposed a long time ago, some level of server access so that we can use it to set up games without you needing to spend time which you obviously don't have?

[thegrime]

A server?

Or, as I proposed a long time ago, some level of server access so that we can use it to set up games without you needing to spend time which you obviously don't have?

1) Letting unknown people run amok on a server is never a good idea, and to setup a system that allows it without too much risk will take time.
2) The system isn't at a state where just anyone can "set up games", and that's been the real sticking point.
3) Getting it to the point where someone (even it's not me) can setup games is time consuming, needs research, and needs someone with complete access to the system (see point 1).

At the end, I'm paying for the server and am responsible for it's upkeep and ensuring that it remains uncompromised. If you have a plan that deals with all three points above and satisfies my paranoid nature, I'm all ears.

[morphles]

Some things I learned while preparing for my mini game (sadly preparation took much longer that I thought, and it might still take a bit, since I found some issues, though that will be in new sub-forum).

Old logins system for GT totally sucked. And it is simple (relatively) to setup proper freeciv login (I'll be using that). Freeciv can use on of server db backends for account storage, I'll be using sqlite, though for GT probably mysql is better choice as I presume forums are already working on it. Freecivs account db, only use two tables, one for tracking login times/attempts. And one for authentication, that is basically user name and I think sha1 hash of pass (or maybe it was md5, will have to check on that). Not sure which hash forum uses, but in any case one could quite easily write required account names and hashes into freeciv tables from other program. Thats for authentication setup.

For game setup, well you should only need rulset. Which users can agree up and manage whatever way they want (say using github). Then when they thing everything is setup you checkout ruleset, start game server with it and auth db. And that should be basically it. Quite little involvement needed. Frankly original GT system with server console and stuff seems like a bit of over-complication. If we were to play random games with random starting nations (the best kind of setup ), rule-set to be checked out should be mostly enough (as basically all settings can be set up in ruleset, exception being probably being some server settings which should not vary between games anyway and could be copied from old games). Well with hopes that in game adjustments are not needed...

If one is very afraid that malicious ruleset causes buffer overflow and arbitrary code executions, well dunno start freeciv with that ruleset in vm first? But this sounds a bit paranoid, though