Re: GGZ (was:Is this list still alive?)

[Josef Spillner <dr_maux@maux.de>]

On Fri 12. Jan 2001 23:33 Henningsen wrote:
> If the loser does not report, the winner can complain, and people who often
> do not report get sanctioned. But since the loser does not go down in rank
> himself, the system works very well, with faithful reporting going on.

Sounds good. This could directly be implemented: All clients have to report 
scores, together with check sums, and if a single client brings up different 
results the player is regarded a cheater. When playing with "registered 
users" instead of "guests" (which would be standard when playing with high 
scores), this would lead to that the cheating player does not climb up in the 
highscore. Good idea!

> So do I understand GGZ right, it will possible to launch networked games
> (like, Loki could use it for launching Myth 4 multiplayer games??)?

It is already possible. There exist TicTacToe, NetSpades, LaPocha, Connect 
the dots, Hastings1066, Reversi, Combat and Chinese Checkers. There is also a 
chess lib in CVS, and plans/first code for games like Hangman, Ueberflieger, 
Sink the Ship...

Myth 4 is a difficult thing. GGZ is a project with many people, and of course 
everybody's opinion differs slightly from others. I doubt we want just be 
used as a launcher for commercial games, only because people might get used 
to GGZ and the Myth4 company then thinks to use the wide installation to 
promote the game. AFAIK no distribution has GGZ on it yet, but I think it 
won't take too long, then they will.

The other side is that I've got requests, especially regarding KDE games, 
which want a possibility to participate w/o changing any network code. I know 
that XFrisk has already been ported and that someone tries to figure out how 
hard it would be with FreeCiv, but I've looked myself at e.g. FreeCraft, and 
it would require significant changes, so that I fear the GGZ project might be 
regarded as kind of monopolists which every game should support. I don't want 
that, personally, as I like the diversity of Open Source games and the number 
of different network libs and concepts available. My project's (MindX) 
acronym means MindX is not DirectX!, and therefore I wouldn't let even the 
projects I am in have a monopoly of any kind.

Therefore I am searching a solution how to support those games without 
bothering with code changes.
As there are many game authors on the list: What about a command line option 
(in my test programs I've called it --zone), to report the essential 
information, at least what I've already mentioned (player:pass@host:port)? 
This could be realized as a macro directly after main().
But even this little thing would mean to limit the projects' freedom :(

> Peter Henningsen
> alifegames.com

Hm. Is there a Linux version of your game in progress? It looks interesting 
and is GPL'd, but requires windows. Just wondered...

Josef Spillner

-- 
The MindX Project - http://mindx.sourceforge.net
student - js177634@inf.tu-dresden.de
qmail - foomail@internet24.de


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