PROJECTS

INL, way for captains to choose which players on queue should enter.

$Id: PROJECTS,v 1.10 2006/05/06 12:17:29 quozl Exp $	

List of things to do in the future

	- GGZ Gaming Zone integration.

	- convert stored data to YAML.

        - registration, avoid sending SP_PSTATUS for newly logged in
          slots until after successful authentication.  Prevents
          attack via username.  Prevents pre-registration attacks.

        - registration, avoid placing ship in game until successful
          client verification.

	- RESETRACE, unrepresented race planet logic, initial state
          all planets neutral, with START_ARMIES armies, on arrival of
          first member of a race, their space planets are changed from
          neutral to race ownership with START_ARMIES, on departure of
          last race member, planets outside the space are released to
          either neutral with zero armies or the owning race of the
          space, and planets inside the space are changed to neutral.
          This could also be gradual.

	  But, if everyone on a losing team leaves, and then comes
	  back, their planets will have been restored to them.  So
	  need a sticky ownership and a current ownership?  Or an
	  owned by race bit mask for each planet.

	- strip spaces before parsing robot commands, reported by KaraokeBar,
	  Australia, 2007-05-15.

	- show damage of other ships, for the fish and oyster mode,
          but also has use-cases for newbie mode, for robots, and for
          friendly ships in a normal game, according to configuration.

	  SCAN ... if 0 does not send any information.  Overrides all
	  other SCAN prefix options below.  Default off.

	  SCAN_AUTO_TACTICAL ... if 1 provides automatic scan for
	  every ship in tactical as the data changes.  Expected on for
	  newbie servers.  Default on.

	  SCAN_AUTO_GALACTIC ... if 1 provides automatic scan for
	  every ship not on tactical as the data changes.  Default
	  off.

	  SCAN_FRIENDLY ... if 1 sends information about enemy ships,
	  according to war, peace, hostility settings.  Expected to be
	  turned on by illuminated server administrators.  Default on.

	  SCAN_HOSTILE ... if 1 sends information about enemy ships,
	  according to war, peace, hostility settings.  Default on.

	  SCAN_ROBOTS ... if 1 sends information about robot ships,
	  intended for educational use.  Expected to be turned on by
	  illuminated server administrators.  Default on.

	  SCAN_OUT_OF_TOURN_ONLY ... if 1 sends information only if
	  status->tourn is false.  Default on.

	- scenario game, team A: Starts with 3/4 of the players and 20
          planets, Team B: Starts with 1/4 of the players and 5
          planets but when they kill a player of team A it switches
          team to team B. of course the starting distributing might
          have to be adjusted. [credit wc2z on #netrek]

	- scenario game, entire galaxy starts off as neutral, every
          player starts with 1 kill and 2 armies.  Most planets after
          20 minutes wins.  Option only 5 lives.  Option respawn
          positioning would be interesting to balance. [credit Jerub
          on #netrek]

    - clean up PROJECTS
    [added: 2007/02/22 by karthik, assigned: NONE]

    - fix blank motd for no-entry-permitted INL guests on some clients
    [added: 2007/02/22 by karthik, assigned: karthik]

    - update clue check with new questions
    [added: 2007/02/22 by karthik, assigned: karthik]

    - improve behavior during INL pauses: make quit, join, and rejoin
      work properly (this will let TRADE work properly paused as well)
    [added: 2007/02/22 by karthik, assigned: karthik]

    - selective advertising of INL server, perhaps only if both teams
      are captained to prevent meta-suckage effect after games end
    [added: 2007/02/22 by karthik, assigned: karthik]

    - fix problem with clients getting very slow updates of player stats
      in many cases during t-mode
    [added: 2007/02/22 by karthik, assigned: NONE]

    * PROJECTS entries prior to 2007/02/22:

	- test scripting, a command line server robot that does
          nothing by itself, use tools to set position, direction,
          speed, and then evaluate resultant position after n updates.

	- factorise message insertion, and maintenance of mc_current,
          as it is distributed all over the code.

	- list connection failure scenarios and response by server,
	  so that we can reduce jammed slots.

	- use response time on metaserver solicitation packet as
	  indicator of lag to the server.  Client coding required.

	- install-minimal, dist-minimal targets, to make ntserv &
          include only?

	- config.h.in settings to move to configure --enable-feature
	  options, so that a separate config.h.in does not need to be
	  maintained by server administrators.

	- banned login for client with tryudp on seems to begin udp
	  negotiation, making it hard for the player to see the cause
	  of hang.

	- banned login can still tie up a slot for as long as it takes
	  for it to time out or the player to hit QUIT.
	  (impact reduced by BAN_NOCONNECT)

	- perm and temp bans in netrekd, have it access shmem and
	  detach.

	- queue dump, once a sufficient queue has built, for each of
	  the queued players close the shared memory section for one
	  game and open a new one.  Forward link from queue to next
	  section.

	- vote per IP address only, not per slot

	- prevent eject in initial two-minutes of ship time, if ship active,

	- server generated screen shot of final frame of genocide, for
          use in the blog entry,

	  INL server specific feed, containing game results, summary,
	  ltd stats by player.

	  Metaserver specific feed ... new servers listed, delistings,
	  weekly summary of query counts with history.

	- tools/update.c sa_sigaction not present on NetBSD.  [Hietbrink]

	- add lag statistics to LTD stats.  [Zach]

	- tail waggle effect, necessary?
	  [work done to fix, by quozl ... in test on continuum]

	- docs/tools.doc and tools/README say that trimscores argument
          is a niceness value, but it is actually a harshness value.
	  usage() in trimscores.c also doesn't match.

	- end_tourney.pl, replace the final score indicator with more
          meaningful information.  For example, the final planet count
          and final continuous score as printed at the end of the INL log.
          From: David Swasey <swasey@cs.cmu.edu>, 03 Apr 2002 16:56:58 -0500

	- minor playing a man down fix, if t-mode and no steering or
	  speed changes for ten minutes, free slot.

	- vary observer update rate down when not in use, use lock on
	  player or planet event to increase back.
	  [perhaps a new sysdef option for UPS for observers?]

	- configure checks for gmp more than once, it should check only
	  once.  Perhaps it is configure for res-rsa duplicating effort?

	- make in keycomp/ (and others) use object modules from ntserv,
	  and so a parallel make fails on a multi-processor box.

	- implement automake

	- web page interface to INL server, including privileged
	  functions such as starting, stopping, or restarting the
	  server, and non-privileged functions such as (a)
	  preconfiguring defaults for the next INL game, including
 	  team names and game time, (b) list of recent games, latest
	  first, with team names and final scores, (c) delivery of
	  cambot recording within web browser, (d) feedback to server
	  god.  [Cameron]

	- send player IPs to metaserver for statistics generation [Uram]

	- include server in spiffy download package [Nowakowski]
          (mactrek does this, 2006-12)

	- there is no way to tell the difference between a busted client and
	  the player simply walking off.

	- revisit syntax of metaservers file to aid understanding,

	- compile with -Wall and fix the problems.
	  [yet to do: crypt(3), sigsetmask(2), keyman, keycomp, & xsg]

	- observers, allow them to have a ship of their own that is ineffective
	  and invisible to others.

	- pledit should be able to edit entries in place online.

	- god's text client, displays messages to god and all, and allows
	  entry of replies from god, showgalaxy with more messages visible.

	- From Dave Swasey: Writes to ERRORS should be timestamped.  At least
	  timestamp daemon startup and death (exitDaemon, etc) messages.
	  Timestamps would have helped me determine which messages in ERRORS
	  matter.

	- mark's changes, if p_y or p_x = 100000, ship oscillates
	  [mark hasn't come back to me on that, it awaits him]

	- accumulate byte counters server wide for bandwidth accounting.

	- all the code in the robots/ directory really need some
	  serious cleanup.  the whole thing is a mess.

	- slots that timeout during login or outfit (resurrect) should be moved
	  back onto the wait queue (at end or start?) and their slot given to
	  the current head of queue player.  May require client changes.
	  [ref findslot() in cow, c/- carlos - quozl]

        - Observer system is screwed up.  Needs major re-write.  Items
          of note:

		Observer state is not consistent. Observer state is
                held in p_status, which is overloaded with death,
                life, free, robot states. Every once in a while,
		p_status gets assigned something other than POBSERV.

		stats collection drop-outs for observers, free slots
                and robots not consistent. Stats for observers and
                robots and free slots should not be collected, but for
                some cases they are.

                save() is still called for observers. it shouldn't

                multiple observer state variables. ntserv keeps a
                global Observer.  p_status in shmem is the other.

          Propose removing POBSERV from p_status and Observer ntserv
          global variable ad add p_type to player struct.  Avoids
          overloading a variable.  Example states could be PTPLAYER,
          PTOBSERVER, PTROBOT and PTPRACTICE.  Whenever a slot changes
          modes, save the slot (if appropriate) and re-read stats from
          .players anew as if a fresh login occurred but without the
          slot assignment (which would require a client upgrade).

          Cleaning up the observer code is a prerequisite for
          obs<->player switching and non-contiguous INL slot PROJECT
          entries.  First crack at it assigned to Carlos V.

INL robot issues following testing with Tom Holub

	- port 2592 "sorry you can't play now" message needs to be nicer [low]
	  [perhaps make them appear to be on an infinite queue and give them
	  a motd that explains the situation]

	- make GAMETIME response two lines if team name too long [low]

	- observer can change teams?

	- force known team name for REGISTER

	- INL robot entry voted in from pickup, do not do odds/evens swapping,
	  keep old teams if possible, the league does not need 0-7
	  pre-allocation of slots to teams,


INL robot problems reported by d4sand,

	- no RESERVE command present,

	- robot did not see genocide, (fix daemon to not reset galaxy
	  on a genocide or conquer),  (possible fix, Villalpando 1999-jun)

	- could not rejoin after genocide/conquer, (fix daemon to use
	  non-final why-dead flag),  (possible fix, Villalpando 1999-jun)


INL observations by quozl@us.netrek.org

	- need a captain command to bring an obs in as a player, and
	  vice versa

	- sending PAUSE then CONTINUE as a captain causes a
	  superfluous countdown which does nothing.