[crossfire] Metaserver reporting and accuracy

[Andrew Fuchs]

On 7/18/06, Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:
> Alex Schultz wrote:
> > Either way, perhaps another thing that would be good on servers, would
> > be automatically setting the afk flag if they are idle for more than a
> > certain amount of time, and if they become active again, it will unset
> > the afk flag, unless they turned it on manually. IMHO that behavior
> > would make not including afk players in the count, much more useful.
>
>   That would almost go into yet another category - 'idle'.
>
>   I'm not sure how true it is, but I can certainly envision that there are
> players online who are idle - they are waiting for something interesting to
> happen, partake in chatting, etc.  So while idle, they are effectively around.
>     But that may be over thinking this problem here.

IMO, a timer for AFK status is probably the only way that the whole
afk thing will get used by most people.

Another thing is, should an other status be implemented to tell if the
player is actually playing, or just logged in to chat.  This could be
taken farther to add commands to the protocol so connections to the
server can be set so the player can't do anything but chat and check
other player's statuses, since oldsocketmode uses food iirc.  The
result of this may be a larger player community, but it could
eventualy turn crossfire into more of a chat protocol than a game.

-- 
Andrew Fuchs