benmichael
Chieftain
I propose a headless dedicated server. Something one could run on a Raspberry Pi.
It could take in a config file (and if you wanted to get really fancy you could have a config file generator online), and run the game as a service on the server.
When someone makes a move, the state should be saved. If the server restarts, the service should come back up and reload the previous state. That way no game would ever lose more than a single person's partially completed turn.
When nobody is connected, and there is no AI who hasn't played, the service should go into hibernation, just watching for incoming connections. This would free up server resources, potentially allowing one server to run many instances of the game. Only currently active games would consume resources. Low powered devices, such as the Raspberry Pi, would take longer to decide on AI moves, however in a dedicated server, that's not a huge loss. Memory could be an issue, but there are many many ways that that could be optimized for the special case of a headless server, which has no requirements on any graphical interface.
All calculations should happen on the server (they probably are already). This will allow for consistent state, reduced client hacks, and very lightweight game clients. I'll send a separate feature request for a mobile multiplayer client.
A headless dedicated server wouldn't have to authenticate against steam, because nobody could play as the server. And lets face it, the more people hosting games, the better. You could literally just release a binary free for each architecture (x86, x86_64, arm7, arm64, etc) and os (windows, linux, osx, bsd, etc). Open source code would always be better, I don't expect that will happen, and I respect their right to decide on that.
As a software engineer, I could drone on and on about ideas for the headless server, but I suspect that I've given too much detail already. So the only other thing I'll say is: Please make this for Civ 5 and 6.. I'm not yet rich enough to afford Civ 6, and even if I were, it'll be a long time before all my friends are too.
It could take in a config file (and if you wanted to get really fancy you could have a config file generator online), and run the game as a service on the server.
When someone makes a move, the state should be saved. If the server restarts, the service should come back up and reload the previous state. That way no game would ever lose more than a single person's partially completed turn.
When nobody is connected, and there is no AI who hasn't played, the service should go into hibernation, just watching for incoming connections. This would free up server resources, potentially allowing one server to run many instances of the game. Only currently active games would consume resources. Low powered devices, such as the Raspberry Pi, would take longer to decide on AI moves, however in a dedicated server, that's not a huge loss. Memory could be an issue, but there are many many ways that that could be optimized for the special case of a headless server, which has no requirements on any graphical interface.
All calculations should happen on the server (they probably are already). This will allow for consistent state, reduced client hacks, and very lightweight game clients. I'll send a separate feature request for a mobile multiplayer client.
A headless dedicated server wouldn't have to authenticate against steam, because nobody could play as the server. And lets face it, the more people hosting games, the better. You could literally just release a binary free for each architecture (x86, x86_64, arm7, arm64, etc) and os (windows, linux, osx, bsd, etc). Open source code would always be better, I don't expect that will happen, and I respect their right to decide on that.
As a software engineer, I could drone on and on about ideas for the headless server, but I suspect that I've given too much detail already. So the only other thing I'll say is: Please make this for Civ 5 and 6.. I'm not yet rich enough to afford Civ 6, and even if I were, it'll be a long time before all my friends are too.
