Re: [glob2-devel] Questions on YOG features

[Leo Wandersleb]

Hi

/me is not at his pc right now so sorry for not evaluating the long 
awaited changes.
> What should we do visually when the alliances are fixed inside the 
> in-game alliance menu. Currently, those check boxes are simply 
> unclickable, so at first glance, that seems like a bug.
gray? lock-symbol?
> What kind of Ladder system do we want? I gather that you guys want a 
> single global ladder
if we want to be "open" we could have a ladder with every yog server 
reporting down to the delegating yog server. (remember the system: 
yog.globulation2.org delegates routing to other servers etc.) this way 
we would have the system open for others to host alternative main 
servers including a ladder.
> Ranked-games vs Unranked-games?
>     - Ranked games must have fixed alliances
not necessarily. score must depend on alliances so breaking alliances 
could be punished in the ladder formulas ...
>     - If we are to use Elo scores, ranked games must only be between 
> two players. This makes wins/losses etc easy
i want big games to be rated, too. that's why i want all relevant events 
to be logged so we can fix our formulas later.
>     - Otherwise, how should we do a single 'score' for multiple 
> players. One method is to demand two alliance teams, and adjust elo 
> scores based on the cumulative score of all teams on the alliance team
one approach would be to estimate the outcome of the game based on 
scores. 45 and 55 vs. 95 and 5? who would win? my unreflected first shot 
would be to give the 1st team a propability to win of roughly 35% 
because the 95er will easily finish those 50ers and the 5er will not do 
much. So in the end i would give little points for the 95er on a win. 
even less for the 5er. if the unexpected winner is team 1 i would give 
them 65/35 times the points of the other way round. all this is not a 
formula yet but i would love to do this part as i studied math. question 
is how much data we need to make up something suiting. i would love to 
have as much data as possible to also be able to tell what starting 
positions are good on what map etc.
>     - How should ranked games be done in the GUI? Should I add a third 
> tab? This third tab could show the current ranking players, players 
> arround your rank (online and offline), and have a seperate room for 
> ranked games
i would show the ranking only on the website. store all stuff in the db 
or in a text file. the ranking can be done in a separate project. (any 
opposition?)
>     - Ranks when players lose connection/quit. Sometimes its valid, 
> sometimes player forced it
count it. make up formulas and improve those once data proves them wrong.
> Private chat screens?
>     - How should this be done with the GUI? Should I create a 
> right-cick system (would be a big task)?
like /msg Giszmo? only via right click on giszmo? doubleclick on the 
name? /join #mine -> Giszmo just created the channel #mine (click to 
join)? limit created channels to one per player so the channel has the 
name #Giszmo?
>     - A button that creates a new chat room (see below), ability to 
> make chat rooms private do player invitations?
i guess invitations are harder to handle than passwords?
> Multiple Lobbies / Chat rooms?
>     - Should I have a tab specifically for the available chat 
> rooms/lobbies, and maybe a quick-select to create game. This would be 
> the first screen a player sees when they log into yog, like Age Of 
> Mythology
>     - Should each seperate lobby have its own list of games?
this should at least be possible for later so we can have lobbies per 
language.
>     - Should we have multiple lobbies / chat rooms?
>     - Which lobby would connect to our IRC? Should IRC have its own 
> tab away from lobby?  Maybe called "help"
maybe not a bad idea neither. on the other hand it shouldn't be to 
difficult to join each channel on irc, too. so you create #Apple both in 
yog and irc.
> Blocked List?
>     - Should there be another tab in the Settings Screen for YOG 
> settings, which has the list of blocked players
>     - Should there be a button for block? It could be arround player 
> list, you select a player on list, hit block
so it is blocked from your channel? or for the general admin part?
>     - Should blocked players be removed from player list?
in the pre-game window, the host should maybe be able to use the same 
techniques like in the private channel: invite only or password. we 
could also shift the map selection to after the channel window. so 
people gather and the host then selects a map. maybe maps get filtered 
by the count of people in the chan.
> Friend Lists?
>     - Are these good for anything? Should we have these?
hmm. you sound like you plan to do a full feature IM anyway ;)
I guess we should rather see where we can shorten the list of above.
> Multiple YOG Servers?
>     - Are we doing the system where YOG servers can be connected and 
> removed on the fly to help with routing?
>     - Should these alternate YOG servers just do game routing, and 
> still have all the 'meta' stuff done by main meta server? This is easiest
would be ok for me.
> Routing System?
>     - Are we simply sticking with server-routing with the above 
> modifications?
>     - Are we moving to a much more complicated P2P routing system?
no. all game messages should go via the yog server. this server should 
be allowed to delegate the whole game to one of the clients yog server 
or any other registered open yog server.
>     - Should we move to a host routed system?
?
> Password Reset?
>     - Not sure how to connect our YOG to a mail system to have 
> email-based password reset, as those are complicated.
what's so complicated about them? players would have to give their mail 
adress in the first place. my server can send mails like phpbb and wiki 
prove every day.
>     - Current system requires administrators to manually reset password
what can not be a solution on the long run. :/ my brain already sleeps ...
maybe we should require people to register with an emailed password for 
the ladder system.
>     - Should we refer to a special mailing list where administrators 
> can help with the resetting of passwords?
no. we can't do this kind of support. people will ask on the forum anyway.
> Game Cheating?
>     - How are we going to deal with cheating? Technically the source 
> code is open, so this makes cheating extra easy.
as kai says: as long as you won't make a fortune from winning in glob2 
and as long as we are open to programmers people will not waste their 
skills with it too much.
i would not take technical messures but we can officially forbid 
cheating and once we have game replays we can very well enforce this i 
guess.
>     - There is one potential for cheating in game, its possible to 
> manipulate game engine so that new buildings come out fully 
> constructed rather than needing-construction.
how that??? i thought this was impossible by design??
Thinking of it the host could tell the others they need his map 
(including all those buildings/the level 4 workers in his base)
>         - I could spend a small amount of time fixing all of these by 
> changing several Order classes
please do so. at least note those in the bugtracker or in the code. 
//TODO: remove order ....

>     - The server does not have a copy of the game state, so the server 
> must rely on the connected players to recieve the end-game results 
> like win/loss and who, and no connected players can be trusted!
that's an issue. i would note down all reported results if they differ 
and ignore those entries until further investigation. either we can 
batch resolve those issues (kick the cheater, clean the log) or those 
remain in the logs until someone looks into it as people complain.
>         - We could log all sent Orders throughout a game, this way, we 
> could 'replay' the game ourselves, and see what the actual results 
> would have been
>             - Memory usage would get large, would scale badly if 
> theres lots of players in games at once
>             - Could be ditched after the game has ended, only needed 
> to confirm in the event of a conflict
would be my fav. solution.

> Scalability Testing?
>     - Should we make a system for scalability testing on the server?
>     - Bassically a simple AI that acts like a player, connecting to 
> the server, joining, quiting, hosting, running games, making random 
> comments in the lobby, doing everything a regular player can do
>     - Except, we have tens of thousands of these, we can find out 
> where the server bottlenecks show up when theres tons of players.
>     - Good for profiling and bug finding
hmm... not top priority i guess. on the other hand this would be 
something with a clear picture in mind.

Greetings,

Leo Wandersleb

P.S.: will have time to look into it all on saturday.