RSW

RSW server/client version 0.86 is now live. The big news with this update is the replacement of the old, broken messaging system with a much better integrated messaging system. The full ChangeLog entry for this release:

Version 0.86

* Reworked messaging system, combining in-game "stored" messages
with email relay messages. Now there is one unified in-game
messaging system that can handle immediate messages as well as
messages held for next turn's delivery; and this same system hooks
into the email relay.

* Added a "New games" checkbox under the Personal Info tab to
allow users to receive email messages when a new game is available
for signup. You have to specifically turn this option on; it is
not enabled by default.

* Fixed client bug with multiple fleets firing at each other in a
multi-position game.

* Made the active games and completed games lists both visible
simultaneously on the top-level RSW client window.

* Changed capture rules: it is now possible to capture a neutral
(unowned) fleet even if it has ships.

* Report the number of players in the game, and if it is a "quick"
game, the number of players who have yet to submit orders.

David

Awesome. I'm especially happy for the new game notification and the number of players yet to submit orders info.

In addition to the "you're the only player who hasn't submitted orders" notification discussed in the other thread, I was thinking perhaps there should be a warning email sent to players who haven't submitted orders with one or two hours left in the turn. barker5a just had a turn that went the full turn length, and I suspect someone didn't get their orders in in time. A warning email might or might not have helped.

I've also noticed that game summary text (for instance, on the My games page) becomes more and more difficult to read the more information is added to it. Instead of this:

wheel3q started 31 Jul 2007, now at turn 2. 12 players, freq 7q (every 7 days, or when all players have submitted orders). Next turn is due 06:42 14 Aug 2007, on 14 Aug 2007, in 2 days (it may run sooner). Waiting for 3 players to enter orders. You are in this game as the Apostle Toad, score 9. You have submitted 13 orders this turn.

perhaps it should be formatted as a list:

wheel3q:

• playing as Apostle Toad
• Your score: 9
• Now at turn 2
• 12 players
• Freq 7q (every 7 days, or when all players have submitted orders)
• Next turn is due 06:42 14 Aug 2007, on 14 Aug 2007, in 2 days (it may run sooner)
• Waiting for 3 players to enter orders
• You have submitted 13 orders this turn
• Game started 31 Jul 2007

I've also noticed that game summary text (for instance, on the My games page) becomes more and more difficult to read the more information is added to it.

Hmm? That's odd, it should be formatted in multiple lines, nicely readable. On my browser, it looks like this:


(The fact that the date "14 Aug 2007" is printed twice is a bug, already fixed in cvs.)

It looks similar in Firefox, IE, Safari, and lynx, which are all the browsers I've tried it on. Glancing through the server logs, I'm guessing you're using Opera. Does Opera not support CSS?

I was thinking perhaps there should be a warning email sent to players who haven't submitted orders with one or two hours left in the turn.

We already do have a reminder message that goes out to all the delinquents 24 hours in advance of the deadline. Do you think a one- or two-hour warning would be necessary in addition?

Indeed, while Opera supports CSS, it interprets a few things slightly differently from the other browsers. I found a suitable fix and checked it in, and published it to the server.

David

drwr wrote:It looks similar in Firefox, IE, Safari, and lynx, which are all the browsers I've tried it on. Glancing through the server logs, I'm guessing you're using Opera. Does Opera not support CSS?

Opera definitely supports CSS, and is generally one of the most standards compliant browsers available.

After some investigation, there seem to be two things going on here. First, the rendering was actually worse than I described, in that each line of text was being centered. This appears to be due to the table element that's enclosing the entire current games section. There are no tr, th, or td elements inside the table, and the HTML 4.01 spec does not appear to describe how user agents should render content directly within a table element. Opera appears to treat such content as a caption, and center's it.

The cause of the missing line breaks appears to be this line in your stylesheet:
BR:before { content: "\A" }
When this line is commented out, the line breaks are inserted correctly. I suspect this is a bug in Opera, although I'm curious what your purpose is in adding an additional line-feed character in front of the line break.

drwr wrote:We already do have a reminder message that goes out to all the delinquents 24 hours in advance of the deadline. Do you think a one- or two-hour warning would be necessary in addition?

I guess it depends on the game length. For games on a two day cycle, 24 hours seems too soon.

drwr wrote:Indeed, while Opera supports CSS, it interprets a few things slightly differently from the other browsers. I found a suitable fix and checked it in, and published it to the server.

Oops. Didn't notice your post before I responded.

However, right now the listMyActive and listMyGames pages are giving me an Internal Error. Not sure if you're aware of this.

FishSpeaker wrote:However, right now the listMyActive and listMyGames pages are giving me an Internal Error. Not sure if you're aware of this.

Fixed now.

I suspect this is a bug in Opera, although I'm curious what your purpose is in adding an additional line-feed character in front of the line break.

I didn't put it there; it was like that when I got it. It came from a sample style sheet provided by w3.org. Originally, when I was writing my own style sheets from scratch, I found that they would render frustratingly different on different browsers, because of different initial defaults built into the browsers. All of those problems when away when I appended that sample style sheet, which defines pretty much every HTML tag, to my own. Presumably that extra line-feed character in <BR> is intended to inform the browser to implement <BR> by inserting a line break. But, yeah, commenting it out fixes the Opera problem. And I also added a few 'text-align="left"' tags to stop the centering behavior.

However, right now the listMyActive and listMyGames pages are giving me an Internal Error. Not sure if you're aware of this.

Yeah, a bad merge onto the branch, oops.

I guess it depends on the game length. For games on a two day cycle, 24 hours seems too soon.

Hmm, that's true. I suppose I could come up with some formula relating game length to appropriate reminder time. But one also could argue that for games on a two-day cycle, a reminder really ought to be unnecessary altogether.

David

This appears to be due to the table element that's enclosing the entire current games section.

Oh, I hadn't noticed that table element before. That can only be a bug; I don't really know how that crept in there. I'll remove it for future releases.

David