Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Web version of freeciv. Please mention the site you're using, if speaking things other than general freeciv-web codebase.
AndreasR
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Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by AndreasR »

Hi everyone!

Freeciv-Web now has support for playing Play-By-Email games on the live server.
Please give it a try and report how it works for you! Currently there is support for two players playing PBEM-games.

Andreas
garar
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Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2016 3:09 pm

Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by garar »

Hello!

Is there a way to customize PBM game? When I try to start a PBM game I can't see options or anything.

Otherwise it seems to be working great, for now.

Thanks!
AndreasR
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Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by AndreasR »

garar wrote:Hello!

Is there a way to customize PBM game? When I try to start a PBM game I can't see options or anything.

Otherwise it seems to be working great, for now.

Thanks!
I agree that games should be made customizable at some point. The reason why PBEM can't be customized at the moment, is that PBEM games requires a lot of custom game settings for the game to be playable over e-mail. This is the current default settings, for PBEM games, is there some setting in particular that you think we should change?

Thanks for the feedback! Please report more bugs in PBEM games if you find any?

Andreas
garar
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Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2016 3:09 pm

Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by garar »

Hello Andreas!

In my game we experienced repeated turns. We played 3650 BC twice.

First time:

https://play.freeciv.org/webclient/?act ... 2123743249

Second time:

https://play.freeciv.org/webclient/?act ... 9722745692

Two more improvements:

1. It would be good if the game would remember when you log in (keep it in cookie or smth), so I don't have to remember every time.
2. Enter doesn't work on login form, you need to click login manually.

One more thing: Chat is not working, I think. I don't know if it is supposed to work. This is low priority.

Thanks for everything!
AndreasR
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Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by AndreasR »

Thanks for the feedback, I will try to fix these bugs in the next version.

I just upgraded Freeciv-web on the production server today at the time your reported the issue, and one change I did then could have caused the repeated turn problem.
I would be interested in knowing if you experience repeated turns more again later, or if the server-upgrade caused it.

Andreas
garar
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2016 3:09 pm

Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by garar »

Hello Andreas!

About default settings:

https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/ ... _pbem.serv

set startunits=ccccccwwwwwx

1. Why is there 6 settlers and only 5 workers? Is this on purpose or is it a bug?
2. Is there a difference between: set startunits=ccccccwwwwwx and set startunits ccccccwwwwwx? Between whitespace and equals?


Btw, we didn't see repeated turns recently. I think you were right and it was caused by server upgrade/restart.
I can now press enter on login page, thanks!

One more thing:

You can click on the same link and play the same round twice, I'm not sure what happens then, I just noticed it is possible to do it.

Thanks for everything!
AndreasR
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Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by AndreasR »

>1. Why is there 6 settlers and only 5 workers? Is this on purpose or is it a bug?

The setting was copied from the Longturn settings. What would you like the startunits setting to be? Are there other settings we can copy from Longturn?

>2. Is there a difference between: set startunits=ccccccwwwwwx and set startunits ccccccwwwwwx? Between whitespace and equals?

It is the same.

> You can click on the same link and play the same round twice, I'm not sure what happens then, I just noticed it is possible to do it.

This is a bug. For now, it can be considered cheating, and is frowned upon. I will fix it in the next release.

Anything else to improve in Freeciv-web PBEM?

By the way, this page will give the PBEM players some debugging status. It is reset after every server restart, though. The syntax is [turn, phase, list of players, date of last end-turn].

Andreas
garar
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2016 3:09 pm

Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by garar »

Hi Andreas!

Answers below:

>>1. Why is there 6 settlers and only 5 workers? Is this on purpose or is it a bug?

>The setting was copied from the Longturn settings. What would you like the startunits setting to be? Are there other settings we can copy from Longturn?

I didn't know you copied those settings from Longturn, I was just curious why 6 settlers and 5 workers.

>> You can click on the same link and play the same round twice, I'm not sure what happens then, I just noticed it is possible to do it.

>This is a bug. For now, it can be considered cheating, and is frowned upon. I will fix it in the next release.

I saw that you fixed it in one commit, but I didn't get a chance to test it yet. Thanks for fixing it!

Btw I noticed couple things:
1. You can't build bridges even with bridge building researched. Me and my friend tried it couple times and we couldn't do it. You can start building a road, and in the next turn it is finished, but no road is present and you can build road again.

2. Some cities don't display which fields are being used on overview tab. I open a city and I don't see which squares are being used.

3. Diplomacy doesn't work, I can't make a treaty or anything with my friend. It looks like the game requires both players to be present at the same time. Can this be fixed? Or maybe is there a workaround?

EDIT:

One more thing: Is there somekind of keyboard shortcuts list? I saw one in the manual and there is no mention of ctrl+c which shows/hides city names. I wonder if there is one more complete.


Thanks for everything!
kokomante
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Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:42 pm

Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by kokomante »

I'm curious: how does the save game mechanism work? Isn't it possible to also play by mail by starting a multiplayer game and save the game, then send it around the players?

And can the player limit go beyond 2 in PBEM?
AndreasR
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Re: Play-By-Email support now in Freeciv-web

Post by AndreasR »

kokomante wrote:I'm curious: how does the save game mechanism work? Isn't it possible to also play by mail by starting a multiplayer game and save the game, then send it around the players?

And can the player limit go beyond 2 in PBEM?
The PBEM support makes it more easy and convenient to play games using email to announce turn changes. PBEM games have different settings than multiplayer games, for example PBEM games have alternating player moves, while multiplayer games have simultaneous movement. PBEM games are intended to be played over a long time period, similar to Longturn, while regular multiplayer games usually lasts some hours.

Do you have some feedback about things to improve in the PBEM support?

I plan on adding support for more than 2 players in PBEM games soon.

Andreas
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