Net Angband: alpha testing

[d_m]

So, based on one of the earlier threads here, I have set up a small service to play Angband online via a Javascript terminal. You have a "register" a username and password (which is saved on my server as a hash). I would recommend not using an important password (although it is not saved in the clear).

The game is at: http://cage.bearhome.net:7777

Arrow keys don't seem to work for me right now, but the numpad and number keys (and presumably rogue keys) all work fine. It is currently playing GCU in 16 colors--if I can patch anyterm to handle 256-color xterm I will upgrade that.

EDIT: Right now the only game option is HEAD. Eventually I hope to put up a few different versions of Angband (and maybe even some variants).

I am currently limiting it to 10 simultaneous connections to try to make sure my server doesn't get destroyed. Please let me know if you have problems, if you enjoy it, etc, etc.

[s0be]

I'd be willing to host a mirror of it.... although syncing the leaderboards and save files would be interesting. I have plenty of bandwidth on one of my servers.

[Nick]

A quick test says this is very cool. I have a noticeable (and variable) delay between keypress and action, but I guess I can't blame you for the inadequacies of the internet

[Pete Mack]

Cool. Although I don't think I can play it, unless you introduce a delayed terminal flush for waiting input.

[HallucinationMushroom]

This is way cool, I will play on your server on lunch breaks from time to time.

[Zikke]

The delay is a bit hard to play with, and the screen needs to be cleared of old tiles frequently, but this has potential! Very cool!

[d_m]

Cool. Although I don't think I can play it, unless you introduce a delayed terminal flush for waiting input.

I'm not sure I totally understand your concern--do you mean that the draws are happening too fast and you want to see more intermediate output?

Anyterm is a project that I just found, so I'm going to dive into the source to try to address various problems we find. Fixing some of the xterm escape handling will be a big priority, and your issue may be as well.

[d_m]

The delay is a bit hard to play with, and the screen needs to be cleared of old tiles frequently, but this has potential! Very cool!

Agreed.

I'm hoping to improve the xterm support in Anyterm, which should address the drawing/redrawing issues.

[Nick]

What happens to character dumps? I made one successfully, apparently...

It would be nice to have a method of dumping to the ladder - I'm too ignorant to know how easy that is to do.

Also congrats to konijn for being first to die - I like the high score table. FA's is currently broken, so I'll have to make sure it gets fixed in time

[Pete Mack]

@d_m:
I meant that the refresh time is extremely slow over the internet. (I expect it's not a problem when you are connecting on the same subnet in Philly, but it's a long delay in Seattle.)

There's code in dungeon.c that includes an "option" Term_fresh.

What I'd suggest is adding back the "efficiency options" submenu which was really for optimizing redraw over a high-latency connection, and making Term_fresh() optionally check if input is waiting; and only flush if there is.

Also, there's no need to show position while running, and various other things.

Take a look at 3.0.6 for ideas.

[Zikke]

I noticed the function keys don't work. Is that a limitation of Anyterm? I use that for macros usually.

[d_m]

I noticed the function keys don't work. Is that a limitation of Anyterm? I use that for macros usually.

I think that is an Anyterm limitation (along with arrow keys not working). I'm optimistic that I can fix this relatively quickly.

[d_m]

What happens to character dumps? I made one successfully, apparently...

It would be nice to have a method of dumping to the ladder - I'm too ignorant to know how easy that is to do.

Also congrats to konijn for being first to die - I like the high score table. FA's is currently broken, so I'll have to make sure it gets fixed in time

I think I'm going to try to write a CGI that make dump files available and then another one to make posting to the ladder easy. My first thought was for people to enter oook username/password and then have my app automatically post, but Pav might not be super excited about that.

Anyway, now that there are some dumps on the FS I will try to get something working.

[d_m]

One thing I've noticed... when someone doesn't quit their game via CTRL-x but just closes the window, the angband process on my server seems to hang around. It's hard for me to tell which of these are "dead" and which aren't, so I'm reluctant to kill any of them.

So, please make sure to CTRL-x when you wan to stop, rather than just closing the window. I've asked on the Anyterm Forum for a way to send signals on window close so I can end the process, but until then it seems like it will have to be manually done.

[Derakon]

You can use Javascript to send occasional keepalive signals to the server (just have a timer set to every 30s, which triggers an XMLHttpRequest to a CGI that says "yes, the user is still here"). If you don't get one of those every two minutes, say, then you can mark the user as gone and ctrl-X for them.