PBW obsolete? Time for fresh ideas? |
I was just thinking, PBW was pretty cool when it first came out, but perhaps it's a bit outmoded now... Why have all the games on one central server where only admins can change and install game mods, for instance? In an age of peer-to-peer and distributed computing, what's the point? As long as we have a central location to advertise our games, who cares where they're hosted?
So I was thinking some more about that PBFTP idea, where you have a central FTP repository where everyone uploads/downloads their files. What if you used bittorrent to distribute the .gam files? Not very useful as they're not that big and everyone would have to be online anyway... What if you had the host keep his PC on and did a FTP repository, as has been suggested before? That could work, especially with a custom client which downloaded and uploaded files as necessary, and notified the player via an audible warning when he was the last player to upload? (It's only a matter of checking which .plr files are on the server! 
) What if you used CVS or Subversion to store the files, so it would be incredibly simple to roll back a turn?
Well, any other thoughts? Maybe a custom client with a CVS client in the backend which connects to a CVS server on the host's machine, for the best of both worlds?
Thoughts???
I had hoped...
I had hoped that this sort of functionality would have been built-in to the SEV game itself. You fire it up, tell it which server you are running games on, and it would show you all your current games, their states, which ones are waiting on you, etc...
In a pinch, though, something like PBW for SE:V would be VERY welcome. PBW for SEIV is great, but I had always hoped it would have evolved with a bit more polish through the years - but I won't play a multiplayer game without it these days anyway.
As I'm sure Ekolis is
As I'm sure Ekolis is realizing(if he's using it in our game), se5a's pbftp program(see thread in multiplayer forum) is simple, but it works very nicely, easy to setup and use and fast fast fast 
. All you need is a place to ftp the files.
I guess all thats left is Ek's other issue: "As long as we have a central location to advertise our games, who cares where they're hosted?"
So where do we advertise hosted games?
Right now:
1. IRC #spaceempires
2. www.spaceempires5.com > multiplayer forum
3. Shrapnel's SE5 section > opponents wanted forum - http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=sevow
4. Hopefully spaceempires.net will put up a se5 multiplayer forum soon as well.
In the future:
Hopefully a more central site.
What do I think? As long as
What do I think? As long as it works, I don't care about the technicalities. Many of us are not software gurus so we want an interface straight forward and easy to use. The underlying code doesn't matter, just the results. So, you techies, give us the best you can manage.