Idea for games

SDL Development
1

Hi there!

Heard good news from Dana re: RR2… did she tell you I like trains?

Hvae completely lost my voice as of yesterday, but recovering today.
Rather than spend vacation time doing something useful, like cleaning, I’m
playing CivCTP… :slight_smile:

Anyhow, something just went wrong. I’m not sure what happened, but as I
clicked on the KDE bar ‘minimize’ button, X froze up. The mouse cursor
(back on Civ just after I clicked the button) is frozen, as is the
keyboard. However, my mp3 player is still playing, and I can log in
remotely.

At least the mp3 player was working until a second ago, using almost no
CPU, but now it an X are fighting to each get > 50%…

Anyhow, this is just the setup. I think what happened was that the oss
sound module (which has a 20 minute evaluation limit) pulled the rug out,
so it’s not CivCTP’s fault. But it should be fairly simple to add a
signal handler to save the game, using SIGUSR1 or even SIGHUP. This could
be useful for any turn based game, and it could even be used to hack a
time-interval based autosave (personally I find the CivCTP ‘save every
turn’ autosave to be too slow to bear for long).

The only problem is that you’d have to explain to users WHICH civctp to
HUP… I seem to have 6 of them running, with consecutive PIDs…

What do you think?

-D.

Daniel Morrison \ Senior Unix Systems Administrator
@Daniel_Morrison \ Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
/ Concordia University, Montreal

2

Hi there!

Hi!

Heard good news from Dana re: RR2… did she tell you I like trains?

No, but that’s cool! :slight_smile:

Hvae completely lost my voice as of yesterday, but recovering today.
Rather than spend vacation time doing something useful, like cleaning, I’m
playing CivCTP… :slight_smile:

:slight_smile:

Anyhow, something just went wrong. I’m not sure what happened, but as I
clicked on the KDE bar ‘minimize’ button, X froze up. The mouse cursor
(back on Civ just after I clicked the button) is frozen, as is the
keyboard. However, my mp3 player is still playing, and I can log in
remotely.

That’s actually a bug in Civ, I think. I have no idea what the problem
is, but somebody reported it during beta, and we were never able to
reproduce it. Can you give me a little more information? (i.e. is
it reproduceable, etc.?)

But it should be fairly simple to add a
signal handler to save the game, using SIGUSR1 or even SIGHUP.

Actually there are only a few places where it’s safe to save the state
of the game, so reacting to a general signal isn’t the best idea.

This could
be useful for any turn based game, and it could even be used to hack a
time-interval based autosave (personally I find the CivCTP ‘save every
turn’ autosave to be too slow to bear for long).

An autosave with “save every X turns” would be nice.
In fact, RRT2 has a feature very similar to that.

Hey, I’m not sure when the beta announcement will be officially made,
so let me give you a preview:

Sam Lantinga wrote:

The Railroad Tycoon II Linux beta has officially started.
100MB download:
ftp://rrt2b:RailR0dBab at 209.223.115.151/home/rrt2b/RRT2-beta1.tar.gz

Just unpack and run! The game requires 177 MB of disk space.

Please send comments to beta at lokigames.com
(Bugzilla will be online tomorrow, with RRT2 on as well)

    -Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer, Loki Entertainment Software

Corrected URL:
ftp://rrt2b:RailR0dBab at 209.223.115.151/RRT2-beta1.tar.gz

You’ll get a beta license that you’ll need to fill out, but you can
sneak preview it here. Don’t tell anyone else about this, PLEASE.

The only problem is that you’d have to explain to users WHICH civctp to
HUP… I seem to have 6 of them running, with consecutive PIDs…

HUP the lowest pid. :slight_smile:

Enjoy!
-Sam Lantinga (slouken at devolution.com)

Lead Programmer, Loki Entertainment Software–
“Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature”
– Rich Kulawiec

3

No, but that’s cool! :slight_smile:

Have been one of those freaks that spend ages in the basement with HO
scale models… haven’t had a chance since moving out from home 7 years
ago, but working on it…

That’s actually a bug in Civ, I think. I have no idea what the problem
is, but somebody reported it during beta, and we were never able to
reproduce it. Can you give me a little more information? (i.e. is
it reproduceable, etc.?)

No, it’s not reproducable. Now here’s the interesting part. I tried to
play quake2/q3test again today after a month or two that I hadn’t. Both
continually crashed on me (this is in Win95). About 6 months ago, we
overclocked Dana’s machine from 266 to 300.

We never had a single problem that we hadn’t seen before overclocking.
But about two weeks ago, we got a new 64 MB RAM (to play civctp). I think
that perhaps it’s unhappy (don’t know why, since the new RAM is PC-100,
and the old RAM is PC-66). At any rate, I reset it back to 266 MHz, and
now q3test runs properly again. I’ll play civctp, and tell Dana to resume
her large saved game, and if there are no more unexplained crashes, I’ll
assume that was it… (I believe most of the crashes we experienced before
the new RAM were due to /home being full, or out of memory (my computer).

Either the new RAM is being sensitive, or maybe it’s adding enough heat
inside the case to cause problems, or just the added current drain, I
don’t know. I might run a few more tests later.

But it should be fairly simple to add a
signal handler to save the game, using SIGUSR1 or even SIGHUP.

Actually there are only a few places where it’s safe to save the state
of the game, so reacting to a general signal isn’t the best idea.

Darn.

Hey, I’m not sure when the beta announcement will be officially made,
so let me give you a preview:

Sam Lantinga wrote:

The Railroad Tycoon II Linux beta has officially started.

So it hasn’t officially started yet? Or it has?

100MB download:
Corrected URL:
ftp://

You’ll get a beta license that you’ll need to fill out, but you can
sneak preview it here. Don’t tell anyone else about this, PLEASE.

Cool! It’s on it’s way now… I assume that Dana can be exempt from the
secrecy, although I’ll impose the same conditions on her…

Thanks!

The only problem is that you’d have to explain to users WHICH civctp to
HUP… I seem to have 6 of them running, with consecutive PIDs…

HUP the lowest pid. :slight_smile:

It does seem to clean up nicely when I do that.

Enjoy!

Thanks a bunch! (now my week will be really shot :slight_smile:

-D.

Daniel Morrison \ Senior Unix Systems Administrator
@Daniel_Morrison \ Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
/ Concordia University, MontrealOn Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Sam Lantinga wrote:

4

Thanks a bunch! (now my week will be really shot :slight_smile:

grin

Have fun!

I’ve gotten as far as 76953680 bytes, (leaving 25MB to go) and got a
"netin: Connection reset by peer"

Now when I connect to do a ‘reget’ I can no longer authenticate using the
supplied user name and password… Umm…

-D.

PS: Civ hasn’t crashed yet, although I’m still only at 1000BC.

Daniel Morrison \ Senior Unix Systems Administrator
@Daniel_Morrison \ Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
/ Concordia University, MontrealOn Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Sam Lantinga wrote: