3dpong request for hosting

[Samuel Klein]

Benjamin M. Schwartz writes:
> Samuel Klein wrote:
>> Yes, it would help to have distributed network services such as ones
>> that let you say "join the next available connect/pong game"
> This is easy to implement within the current sharing framework.  It just
> requires each game to pair off users as they join the activity.

I'm not sure what use case you have in mind.  I'm suggesting a service
that does not require you to explicitly join one instance of an
activity.  You don't care how many people are playing pong (0 or 10)
or the XO-color of the person who started any specific instance of the
activity.  You just want to be connected to the next available person
who also says they want to be connected that way -- whether that means
you hang out broadcasting your availability for a while, or are on a
distributed waiting list, or wait while a number of idle players
running a shared activity (who haven't said "aggressively pair me for
a game" but are perhaps waiting for a specific partner) are invited to
play with you.

Existing tournament systems provide all of the above.  The GAMBIT
group working on a card game system may have specific ideas they've
tried to implement.

On Jan 11, 2008 7:42 PM, Wade Brainerd <wadetb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of the case where there are 5 people connected to a
> 3dpong activity.  Two are playing, the rest are watching, waiting to
> play the winner.  Some overall score needs to be maintained, saved to
> the journal etc.

Overall score and persistent rank are metadata that could be stored
externally to a specific activity -- it could ask the journal, the
activity, the network for different scores and metadata (# of games
played/won, parameters of each game and raw score) and could, for
instance, calculate a number of different "averages" or lifetime
ratings for a given activity.  And I can imagine wanting to have ready
access to this information for a few dozen activities without opening
up all of the activities individually - speaking to the reuse you're
asking for.

SJ

> Someone has to maintain the list, and if they leave then someone else
> has to take it over.
>
> There are currently open bugs with the Connect activity for these
> issues... So it would be nice if the solution could be reusable.
>
> Wade
>
> On Jan 11, 2008, at 7:04 PM, "Benjamin M. Schwartz" <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu
>
>  > wrote:
>
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> >
> > Samuel Klein wrote:
> >> Yes, it would help to have distributed network services such as ones
> >> that let you say "join the next available connect/pong game"
> > This is easy to implement within the current sharing framework.  It
> > just
> > requires each game to pair off users as they join the activity.
> >
> >> and "pass
> >> this message to wadeb when he reconnects".
> > This is much harder, and much more interesting.  At the beginning of
> > the
> > project, there was much discussion of a store-and-forward network,
> > so that
> > students could send e-mail and use other non-real-time internet
> > services, as
> > long as they occasionally meshed with someone who occasionally had
> > internet
> > access.  This is still a worthy goal, but it has slipped in
> > priority, to the
> > point of being forgotten.
> >
> > - --Ben
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