As I've probably mentioned numerous times already, Trade Wars v3 is currently headed towards a final release somewhere around revision .60 if all goes according to plan. Part of this was to get the Alien AI system included in .56 for in-house testing, and activating the code in revision .57 for wide-scale public testing. This appears so far to be right on schedule.

The other major component that remains to be implemented in TWGS before it can be considered suitable for a final release is the JumpGate web portal system.

The preliminary website is currently under development, and I'll be releasing some early screenshots of the JumpGate portal system in the near future for you sysops and gameops to peruse.

At the moment however, I'm curious as to what you all would believe to be the absolute minimum basic search requirements necessary to make the JumpGate portal effective in helping players find games that match their preferences. The JumpGate database stores virtually every TEDIT setting for each game, as well as many overall server settings, such as extern time, telnet address, etc.

Currently the following search criteria are supported in the pre-alpha phase of development:

Sectors : Greater Than or Less Than.
Turns : Greater Than or Less Than.
Active Players: Greater Than or Less Than.
Gold Mode : On or Off
MBBS Mode : On or Off

What other search criteria do you think will be necessary to provide a useful search engine?

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

quote:
As I've probably mentioned numerous times already, Trade Wars v3 is currently headed towards a final release somewhere around revision .60 if all goes according to plan. Part of this was to get the Alien AI system included in .56 for in-house testing, and activating the code in revision .57 for wide-scale public testing. This appears so far to be right on schedule.

The other major component that remains to be implemented in TWGS before it can be considered suitable for a final release is the JumpGate web portal system.

The preliminary website is currently under development, and I'll be releasing some early screenshots of the JumpGate portal system in the near future for you sysops and gameops to peruse.

At the moment however, I'm curious as to what you all would believe to be the absolute minimum basic search requirements necessary to make the JumpGate portal effective in helping players find games that match their preferences. The JumpGate database stores virtually every TEDIT setting for each game, as well as many overall server settings, such as extern time, telnet address, etc.

Currently the following search criteria are supported in the pre-alpha phase of development:

Sectors : Greater Than or Less Than.
Turns : Greater Than or Less Than.
Active Players: Greater Than or Less Than.
Gold Mode : On or Off
MBBS Mode : On or Off

What other search criteria do you think will be necessary to provide a useful search engine?

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave


Most players also look for the age of the game.

Rand Al Thor, The Dragon Reborn
Let the Dragon ride the winds of time...

quote:
Most players also look for the age of the game.


Game age is now at the top of the list of search engine additions. Thanks for the input!

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

There are 2 things I can think of.

1. Many people also look to for tournys.

2. It seems that many players like themed games. As such, it would be nice if JumpGate had a field for the sysop/gameop/server-op put in the theme name. And the players were able to search/sort on that.

The WABBIT

The WABBIT
ICQ# 12988803
http://www.shadowworldgame.com

quote:
There are 2 things I can think of.

1. Many people also look to for tournys.


Tournament Mode ON/OFF is one of the things that we'll be looking at using to expand the search engine, but that'll probably come at a later date.

quote:
2. It seems that many players like themed games. As such, it would be nice if JumpGate had a field for the sysop/gameop/server-op put in the theme name. And the players were able to search/sort on that.


When a search is conducted, matching games will be listed by age of game (from newest to oldest), with each game being assigned a "name" based on the game name the sysop chose during the game configuration. This should satisfy this requirement. If it doesn't, then we can look at adding another field to the database. Also, the optional "additional game information" field present in the game configuration will be available on the detailed game information page (hopefully), so you could choose to provide a lot more detailed information on the themed nature of the game.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

Will the listings be updated in real-time? An example...have a search criteria for number of players in the game and it would update as players joined?

Fuseblown
http://www.thestardock.com

quote:
Will the listings be updated in real-time? An example...have a search criteria for number of players in the game and it would update as players joined?


This is one of the "pieces of the puzzle" that hasn't been decided on yet. There are well over a thousand registered TWGS servers. Though not all of those are online, there's still a large number of TWGS servers available on the net, 99% of which most players have never heard of or played on.

If the games are updated in realtime, it would require a good chunk of bandwidth. I've been seriously considering having the game statistics be updated by the individual servers every 24 hour at the minimum or every six hours at most. I'm sure everyone would request the six hour update interval, but again, that's still quite a bit of traffic for the web server.

This is one of the things that will be worked out in the revision which implements the Jumpgate code but doesn't make it publicly usable... We'll be able to spend a month or so monitoring the update traffic and fine tuning the update intervals for the full JumpGate unveiling in the following revision.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

quote:
quote:
Will the listings be updated in real-time? An example...have a search criteria for number of players in the game and it would update as players joined?


This is one of the "pieces of the puzzle" that hasn't been decided on yet. There are well over a thousand registered TWGS servers. Though not all of those are online, there's still a large number of TWGS servers available on the net, 99% of which most players have never heard of or played on.

If the games are updated in realtime, it would require a good chunk of bandwidth. I've been seriously considering having the game statistics be updated by the individual servers every 24 hour at the minimum or every six hours at most. I'm sure everyone would request the six hour update interval, but again, that's still quite a bit of traffic for the web server.

This is one of the things that will be worked out in the revision which implements the Jumpgate code but doesn't make it publicly usable... We'll be able to spend a month or so monitoring the update traffic and fine tuning the update intervals for the full JumpGate unveiling in the following revision.


I think every 24 hours is *plenty* often, but with one caveat. How about a TWGS updates the Jumpgate server when it is first started (if the last update was more than one hour ago--if not, it would update when the buffer hour was over), and, while in constant operation, every 24 hours?

For the most part, I only shut my server down either, a) to reboot the system, which is far less often than 24 hours anyway, or b) to activate/bang a game. So the above arrangement would allow brand new bangs to show up immediately, while at the same time minimizing Jumpgate's bandwidth requirements. It *could* be exploited, sort of, by shutting down the server and then restarting it once an hour to force frequent updates, but that would also mean kicking any users in the game off every hour, making it a self-defeating proposition and curbing exploitation.

Edit: Of course, this is assuming the TWGS doesn't update Jumpgate separately for each running game. If it's separate game to game, simply once every 24 hours per game is just fine. Just make sure the time stamp or whatever is cleared if the game is rebanged so that it will update Jumpgate *immediately* when the server comes online after the bang. This could be exploited as well, but only by someone specifically using their registered TWGS to spam the Jumpgate server (couldn't be running any actual games while turning the server on and off and rebanging repeatedly), and I don't think paying a registration fee just to get their IP banned by the Jumpgate server for excessive packet flood is anyone's idea of a good time ;>

Just my two pence :>


Edited by - Xentropy on May 23 2002 02:22:52 AM

quote:
I think every 24 hours is *plenty* often, but with one caveat. How about a TWGS updates the Jumpgate server when it is first started (if the last update was more than one hour ago--if not, it would update when the buffer hour was over), and, while in constant operation, every 24 hours?


What I'd like to do, if possible, is have the server update the game database when a server is first brought back online after a new game is created or an existing game is rebanged. New games would be updated every six hours for the first seven days after the game is rebanged/created. After the first week the server would make updates at either 12 or 24 hour intervals. Personally I think 24 hours between updates on "aged" games would be more than satisfactory.

quote:
Edit: Of course, this is assuming the TWGS doesn't update Jumpgate separately for each running game. If it's separate game to game, simply once every 24 hours per game is just fine. Just make sure the time stamp or whatever is cleared if the game is rebanged so that it will update Jumpgate *immediately* when the server comes online after the bang. This could be exploited as well, but only by someone specifically using their registered TWGS to spam the Jumpgate server (couldn't be running any actual games while turning the server on and off and rebanging repeatedly), and I don't think paying a registration fee just to get their IP banned by the Jumpgate server for excessive packet flood is anyone's idea of a good time ;>


Each game will require an individual contact with the JumpGate server. The rebang issue can be addressed by adding a single bit field to the existing game database. If the bit is toggled on, the server would make a game update as soon as it were booted, the toggle the field off.

I don't forsee a liklihood of the JumpGate server getting spammed under any circumstances. And of course, if for some reason such a problem develops, it would actually be quite easy to deal with.

quote:
Just my two pence :>


Thanks for the input! Every suggestion and comment helps. After all, we can't stamp TWGS as a Final Release until we've listened to and addressed the concerns/suggestions of registered sysops.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave

Hmmm, in addition to turns info in the Jumpgate database, how about time limit info, ie 180 mins/day. Might players need to know that?

Run away! Run away! (Monty Python)

The jumpgate will be a good addition to the TWGS , but as I pointed out to Micro you may want to include a place for telnet addresses.
Micro has a space for 1 HTTP address , and 1 or 2 telnet addresses.
My experiance has caused me to get 3 telnet addresses because on occasions one or more dyn servers go down keeping players from finding my server.
Some players/sysops would say I should get a permanet connection , but after the cost of keeping multipul machine operational (incase puter fryes) my server will be back up in a timely manner.
I cant afford the $70/month + computer systems and extra hardware.
But maybe just as a side thing , the jumpgate can retrieve my IP and eliminate the need for dyn re-direct programs.
This would make thing better for the player looking for new games.

recap : database to include web address , and 3 telnet addresses or a IP retrieval system to eliminate the need for dyn re-direct programs.

Just a thought.
[url="http://geocities.com/videotees/twars.html"]Vid's World on Guam[/url]
telnet://vidsworld.no-ip.org:2002

quote:
recap : database to include web address , and 3 telnet addresses or a IP retrieval system to eliminate the need for dyn re-direct programs.


Database already includes options for website address. The way the telnet links are currently set up is based on IP address. However, if you have your TWGS listening to an internal address and have a router forwarding the port to the internal address, such a link won't work. (i.e., telnet:/192.168.1.200:2002)

This was a good post Vid Kid, because it raised some issues I actually hadn't thought about previously. I'll have to put some thought into this and get with JP to see how hard it would be to add a couple different telnet address fields to the JumpGate configuration tab.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave
EIS Product Support

quote:
quote:
recap : database to include web address , and 3 telnet addresses or a IP retrieval system to eliminate the need for dyn re-direct programs.


Database already includes options for website address. The way the telnet links are currently set up is based on IP address. However, if you have your TWGS listening to an internal address and have a router forwarding the port to the internal address, such a link won't work. (i.e., telnet:/192.168.1.200:2002)

This was a good post Vid Kid, because it raised some issues I actually hadn't thought about previously. I'll have to put some thought into this and get with JP to see how hard it would be to add a couple different telnet address fields to the JumpGate configuration tab.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave
EIS Product Support

Thank you Rave

Will the jumpgate have a no transmit option as well
I'm asking because I run a offline server on the side to bang and edit game ideas , I may at times turn on aliens ..in effect starting the server running , although it is on the LAN it can transmit data to host somewhere and confuse the game data displayed there.

just another precaution to look at.

[url="http://geocities.com/videotees/twars.html"]Vid's World on Guam[/url]
telnet://vidsworld.no-ip.org:2002

If it were possible to have real-time updating on JumpGate servers...and I do realize this will take a lot of bandwidth...but what about allowing people to host mirrors for JumpGate to try and cut down on the bandwidth?

JumpGate could be programmed to ping the mirror whenever one is selected to use...and if it's down, it'll tell the player to choose another mirror server instead.

Since I'm running an ISP, and have plenty of bandwidth to throw around, I'd be willing to host a mirror for this...

Just an idea.

Fuseblown
http://www.thestardock.com

quote:
Thank you Rave

Will the jumpgate have a no transmit option as well
I'm asking because I run a offline server on the side to bang and edit game ideas , I may at times turn on aliens ..in effect starting the server running , although it is on the LAN it can transmit data to host somewhere and confuse the game data displayed there.


Yes. Jumpgate will have to specifically be enabled by the server operator before posting any games to the Jumpgate database. I'm not sure if it'll have a feature to disallow specific games on a server from being posted, but it will certainly have a on/off toggle for the entire server.

Lisa M. Wilson
aka Rave
EIS Product Support