Manifest Destiny Design Document

[RonHiler]

Alright, guys, I've gone ahead and posted the DD for MD. You can find it on the nav bar on the front page, or just click here:

http://www.rjcyberware.com/md/MDDesignDoc.html

There's a link to the original MSWord document on the title page, if you prefer reading in MS Word (I know I do, heh).

Take a look. If you notice anything missing, or have any comments or concerns, let me know.

Ron

[Shane Christopher]

I really feel that an automatic multiplayer system should be included. Play by email is all well and good as an option but it would be much easier to have an automatic system.

Having all players connected at the same time with the ability for real time diplomacy or chat and a turn time limit. At the end of the time limit or when all players have confirmed their turns then the server host would initiate the new turn.

I don't think it would require a massive amount of change in how turns are saved and processed. Basically the sending to the host would be automatic instead of by email. The major difference would be the lobby style gameplay where each player must be connected and can see who else is connected and possibly chat to them.

I've only briefly skimmed over the DD for now so apologies if this is covered in there already.

[RonHiler]

Not a bad idea. We probably talked about this before, hehe.

I'm not going to put it in the design doc for now. That's one of those feature creep things I was talking about. Adding a chat interface and a file transfer is not exactly trivial.

Now, I've already done packet transfers for Sov, obviously. Having done an IOCP server, this would be quite easy in comparison. In fact, I'd just use the same code (IOCP is way way overkill for this app, but since I already have one, it may as well be able to handle several thousand players, right? :D ). The only change I'd make (and it's not so hard to do) is that Sov's transfer packets are UDP based, and I'd probably want to go with TCP for this job.

Anyway, perhaps for the first expansion this would be a good addition. Because I think you are right, it would increase the overall player base. But it's not something I want to tackle until we have a working game first.