From: rmg53668@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Ryan M. Grant)
Subject: Re: Is it Really this complicated?
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 19:17:49 GMT


In alt.games.vga-planets you write:

>I'd like to play, but the mechanics seem terribly complicated.
Play or host?  You say play but mention stuff a host must do.
I'll assume play, since there's usually enough hosts around that
you can participate without hosting yourself.
>As I see it, I have to:
>1)  upload the *.rst files to my sun account in binary
>2)  uuencode each of them
>3)  email each one to the appropriate player
>4)  get responses from each player
>5)  write them to separate files and edit out the header
     ^^^^^^^^^^ uudecode works with the header still in.
>6)  uudecode them to get *.trn files
>7)  download them to my pc
>8)  run host and then start at the begining again

>am I over-complicating it?  If there's an easy way to do it, please
>tell me because I don't think I could deal with all that on a regular
>basis.

First off, note that unless hosting, you only handle your own player files.
Thats about it (except where noted), but look at the repetition there.
Since you don't have to edit anything out, you can get a mail handler to
redirect incoming RSTs to a file (as long as you can count on consistent
headers) and you can have a shell script touudecode and download with one
command.  You then run the turn.bat in you planets directory, and upload
to your account.  (I have a comm program (Telix) script that uploads the
file for me and then runs the send.off UNIX script)  Another script can
do the uuencoding and mailing.

Note also that you don't even have to leave your comm program in most cases,
since Planets is small enough that it will run shelled out from the comm
program, while the connection is still online.  (If you get disconnected
for idle time, pretend to be editing a file before you shell out).

The mail redirection is the trickiest, that requires working with some 
complicated options and other files (.forward most notably)

This automation can be extended to cover the host's job, which I have done.
When my account is entered, it tells me which player trns have arrived.
I then type "pget" to download these that are here.  I can shell out and
run the host, if they're all there, and then return and run the Telix 
script to upload and send off the RSTs.  It took a long time to iron this
out (Thanks to my friends who put up with a few lost files!), but I now
have almost NO administrative overhead.  I might host a couple extra games
in the future, but for now I'm content with hosting one at a time.  There's
plenty of hosts out there at any given time anyway :)

ONE more note, is that we use an entirely adaptive host schedule.  When I
"pget" the TRNs, and then run host, if they're all located in the proper 
directory, then the host runs REGARDLESS of what time or day it is.  As a
safeguard I have a (admittedly complicated) system to ensure that if it's
been more then a day, the host will run regardless of who's got their turns
in.  If a few aren't in yet and the last turn was less then a day ago, then
the system tells me and does not run the host.

That's prolly not up everybody's alley, and would have much less advantages
in full games (ours is small, so we run more turns when we're all around), 
because it would be hard to get everybody to concentrate on planets at once, 
but if they do get together, the adaptave system allows for multiple turns 
a day (we've done twelve) without imposing penalties on those who must 
go out to eat or do work or whatever.  The game just slows back down then.
Once again, those with real lives may not want to get into this, since
you should have better things to do, but those who want to get a game started
FAST, can use a similar method (you dont have to automate it all) to get
everybody together and get those first few short turns out of the way.

So that's just my system, and the answer to your question: "Yes, if you're
the host".  I think I've got stuff running pretty smooth now, so I like
to talk about it.  I hop you'll pardon me if I rambled on a bit.  

- Ryan Grant

Newsgroups: alt.games.vga-planets