If it's a question of ambiguity, of what rules an operator expects, then maybe there needs to be a rules editor. It could include many of the things that we've talked about, commonly known tactics that are sometimes controversial, as well as a way for the op to enter his or her own rules in a block of text. None of these would be enforced by the game, but the game could provide the rules to players in a way that guarantees that they see them and agree to abide by them before entering a game.

Of course I still do want to add some truce options to the game to facilitate those games. But I have no doubt that whatever I do, you and others will be doing your best to undermine and circumvent it.

Take the "xxxxx was attack by yyyyy's fighters" message out of the daily logs and you'll foul up Sings super monitoring script. laff

Either that or have the password prompt before the daily log prompt.

Actually, that isn't what I'm using either. But that is a fun idea, too.

There may be multiple things in the daily logs that could be used, but if it cost you time to look at the daily logs and if the high scores list doesn't update on demand, then there is nothing that can be used to see what's going on in the game without having someone in the game to monitor things. There will be only two ways to monitor in game events:
1) A corpie which is using up his time to do so
2) A dupe (Against the rules on almost all servers)

I suppose there might be some kind of bug involved here that only Sing knows about. I have zero respect for players who are aware of obvious bugs but do not report them so they can be fixed. This clearly goes against the greater good of the community and the game in order to maintain an unfair advantage for one player. I hope that's not what's going on here.

It's now possible to put a delay of 1 minute, 1 hour, or disable startup log display entirely. I thought that was better than moving the password, Big D, because it's less disruptive to scripts. Nothing changes in this output, except that events within the threshold time will not be shown until you get in the game and use the log viewer there.

Actually most log in scripts bypass the daily logs entirely. It's basically an extra enter when entering the game. The delay is just if you choose to view the daily logs right?

It doesn't delay your login. It just doesn't display the delayed log entries.

Yeah, what Micro said. What's a better term for that? I don't think anyone will mistake this for saying that you wait an hour at the prompt to get the output. Even I know that would s*ck

I could give you my cell phone carrier name for that to use since they seem to have perfected delayed text messages.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

OK, that made me laugh.

The same reason I don't text much. My wife gets text messages after she's talked to that person the next day. laff

Lot of detail in the * display..that's free to check from the game login without a time penalty. You could just look for changes in total game figs or port values...

[Dynamic]
Local Game Time=07/14/23 05:57:44 PM
Active Players=8
Percent Players Good=75
Active Aliens=0
Percent Aliens Good=N/A
Active Ports=11397
Port Value=135002421
Active Planets=24
Percent Planet Citadels=91
Active Ships=9
Active Corps=3
Active Figs=309128
Active Mines=170
End Stats.

Just speculating on Sing's methods, and keeping to the
'Scripting Challenge' that is the topic of this subject anyway...

Yes, I thought of the * values, but I wasn't sure how often these values were updated, and also fig count wouldn't be a correct measurement to tell if someone is gridding or not. Port value could possibly tell if someone is trading/cashing, but that doesn't nessesarily mean they are hitting figs.

Hehe. Getting warmer, but still not quite there.

Dynamic data in $ and * are updated hourly (at least are supposed to be).