Almonaster Work-In-Progress

Status

• Page last updated: September 18, 2007
• The latest stable version is Build 621.4
• The latest development version is Build 622 beta 2

New in 622 Beta 1

Gameplay:

• Support for mirrored maps
• Support for twisted maps (thanks to Ah, Kronos, Stellar Jaguar, Lucky, Damascus and many others)

Alajar:

• Duplicate HTTP headers will now cause requests to be rejected as malformed

Fixes:

• Fixed processing of advanced game start options when starting Tournament games
• Fixed display of advanced game start options in when an error occurs starting a Tournament game
• The login page now 'encrypts' the administrator's name to prevent email harvesting by spambots.
• Updated contributions text and Paypal links
• Fixed map exposed option resetting to 'map exposed' when an error occurs during game creation (thanks, RTS Phill)

New in 622 Beta 2

Fixes:

• Fixed bug causing diplomatic status to be elevated when one empire offers a higher status and the other empire offers to surrender or accept surrender.

Todo

• Improve Alajar.html documentation
• Almonaster documentation:
  • Document default map generation algorithm
  • Explain exact steps taken by update algorithm
  • Write better ship combat description
  • Provide exact ship special action descriptions and math
  • Write a better Bridier Score description
• ===
• 622
• ===
• Document mirrored and twisted maps
• Game option for random preset alliances (Soma)
• Game option to view allies' maps (very simple shared maps)
• Maps: fair map generator for games with 2 empires (Ah, Alexia)
• Maps: fair map generator for games with 3+ empires (Agt)
• Maps: local coordinates (Alexia, Ah)
• UI: flashing icon in game lists alerting empires to active blitzes (Soma)
• BUG: If tech is 3.9995508, it rounds up to 4.000 in display (Greg Nord)
• BUG: games should be empire-pausable only when they close?
• Email: use private email fields to send lost passwords
• Setup: create Unfair Fridays superclass
• Make sure games still fall into ruin
• <Dim>In that skudder's game, and ralof's game I was ahead anyway, before they dropped to idle. (BTW, strange thing happens if all are idle -- some # of updates happen, but then they stop)
  <Dim>2 players 3 empires each
  <Dim>all 6 at once (tournament was paused. For first few weeks I played higher than daily rate, so finished most of my games. But then I disappeared, and when it was unpaused, both me and skudder were idle)
  <Dim>to root: I'm not sure how many updates occurred, I think 3 or so.
• ===
• 623
• ===
• Messages: save sent messages as well as received messages
• Messages: move "View saved messages" to Diplomacy screen (Soma)
• Messages: option to keep specific messages permanently (BackStabber) - update messages default to on
• Gameplay: allow tech selections to be undone until the end of the update (Agt, Backstabber)
• Gameplay: fleets for aggregating immobile ships
• Email: use private email fields to send update notifications
• Email: use private email fields to send purge warnings (Feste)
• Email: use private email fields to send game start notifications (Agt)
• Email: option to limit game access to empires with private email fields, using random number challenge (Agt)
• Email: server mode that forces email registration to create an empire
• Admin: server option to disallow games to be started by empires who are idle in other games (Ah)
• Admin: restrict number of concurrent games per tournament
• Tournaments: keep per-tournament list of finished games (Denton Troy)
• Tournaments: admin pause all games / unpause all games buttons should not affect games paused by tournament administrators
• UI: remove per-game options as much as possible
• UI: use checkboxes for binary options
• Cleanup: use INDEX_UNIQUE_DATA with alien key table?
• Cleanup: merge empire Nuker and Nuked tables?
• Cleanup: use variable length columns for empire ship names, with 'use default' option to save space?
• ===
• 624+
• ===
• Admin: make pause/unpause messages more explicit about which administrator paused the game
• UI: option to display players in game as pop-up screen from Info-button, with stats (Ah)
• UI: Ebay-like empire feedback system (Del Hart)
• Gameclass: option for static, non-random planet resource allocation (Tao)
• Gameclass: use existing gameclass as template for new one (Num1ace)
• Gameplay: allow build and end turn before game starts (Black Squirrels)
• Gameplay: next logical command for each ship or fleet (Del)
• Maps: option to always display coordinates at map edges (Alexia)
• Maps: per-planet setting for turning off builder status
• Maps: expose more map options in advanced game settings as well-named presets
• Messages: list message recipients in To: header (Alexia)
• Messages: move ignore option to Options screen from dip, include all 'seen' empires (CJ)
• Messages: provide list of active empires on server, with profile links (Alexia, Ah)
• Messages: provide means of inviting empires into specific games (Alexia, Ah)
• Scoring: change Bridier score calculations to use empire's current score, but opponent's begin score?
• Scoring: monthly Almonaster score and Top List (Soma)
• Scoring: top lists for non-idle empires
• Feature: individual checkboxes for all existing confirmations
      Quitting a tournament
      Deleting a tournament
      Selecting techs (Backstabber, CJ)
      All Game and Server Admin options
•  
• Security: means to allow other empires control over empire in specific games
• Security: provide option for IP address hashing with autologon?
• Security: add ruin percentage to game entrance blocking parameters (Ah)
• Security: place limit on the number of active games an empire can join
• Security: use password hashes longer than 64 bits?
• Security: calculate password hash in client side script for login screen (Vapula)
• Security: encrypt user passwords in database?
•  
• Cleanup: remove all get/set functions for simple empire properties, use Get/SetEmpireProperty
• Cleanup: optimize System Game List rendering to thrash the heap less
• Cleanup: lifetime manager with rw-locks for empires, gameclasses and other objects with queued deletions to avoid deadlocks
• Cleanup: remove LockEmpire usage where possible
•  
• BUG: documentation page has several <form> markups which break the real form
• Database: store a "first invalid row hint" in the table header
• Database: backup files with CopyFile if possible
• Database: ref-counted single-instance storage (scenario: broadcasts)
•  
• Game Histories, movies
      Game creation time
      Empire entries, exits, resignations, deletions, quits
      Pause events
      Each update:
          Time
          First contacts, diplomacy level changes
          Idle empires
          Planet colonizations, invasions, terraforms, nukes, annihilations, engineering, etc.
          Fleet battle outcomes
          Surrenders, obliterations, ruins
  Save history update message from each update.
  Save map from each update of game
  Save econ and mil for each empire
  Make logs + map available in big Game History collection, provide collection trimming in Server Administrator
  Advanced game option to not log a game
  Latest games table
  Game history table for each empire
•  
• Scoring groups (teams / clans)
• In-game advice button for new players
• Robot player
• Ship / fleet auto-control interface
• Teacher empire flag (Lucky)
• Mechanism for saving and restoring individual game state
• Garbled transmissions between non-allied empires (BigB)
• Tournaments: 1v1 elimination tournament type
• Tournaments: round-robin game between teams
•  
• Zero knowledge games (Backstabber)
  No info on # of empires in game much less max # permitted (remove from info screen also). Nothing on size of map, average planet resources, etc.
  Wide range of possibilities for each, randomly determined.
  Game updates only show what you see, so when empires are eliminated you don't know unless you've met them.
  New map algorithm so that you may not necessarily be able to explore the entire map without opening some links to do it, unlike current maps. Or maybe you can, no way to be sure.
  Dip screen only shows subjective info
  All you know at the start is:
  update time
  Ship costs
  Tech advance
  And tech advance is a randomly determined number also, so you get values like 1.831.
  More diverse statistics (Ralof, Wretch)
  Hot and cold players of week/month/year
  Longest winning, losing streak
  Top blood, team, grudge players
•  
• Use CSS:
  background-attachment: fixed;
  <table style="filter:glow(color=red)">
•  
• Replace all .gif files with .png
•  
• Add Independent Planet graphic to themes
• Purge interface should use search interface
• Add TOS acceptance filter to search and purge interface
•  
• Consider adding 'join period' after min number of empires join' instead of using updates for close and first update delays. No updates during join period. End turn button equivalent might allow game to start early (Lucky)
• Alajar: allow disabling of admin pagesource
• Alajar: implement gzip support (http://www.msxnet.org/fast-website)
• Alajar: replace filecache with wrapper around TransmitFile
• Alajar: allow multiple TCP ports to service one threadpool of tasks
• Alajar: user stats gathering for % OS usage, browser usage, etc
• Alajar: Consider using Http API on Win32
• Alajar: memory gates for requests
• Alajar bug: HttpServer::Shutdown closes socket from underneath main thread
• Alajar: investigate P3P support
•  
• Osal: Use IoCompletionPorts on Win32 for threadpool
• Osal: Socket::AsyncSend?
• Osal bug: MemoryMappedFile class unmaps on failed resize

Future enhancements:

Alajar

• Multi-hosting
• Full HTTP 1.1 support
• Ports to more platforms
• Create a page source for CGI-like functionality
• Implement standard SSI support
• Implement byte range requests

Database:

• Implement transactions

Osal:

• Add more meaningful error codes for the various classes and namespaces