[crossfire] additional metaserver2 flag: test server

Mark Wedel mwedel at sonic.net
Sat Sep 1 00:15:49 CDT 2007


  We now have more official support for metaserver2 now, thanks to Leaf & 
real-time (http://crossfire.real-time.com/metaserver2/meta_html.php) - shortly 
I'll be putting metaserver2 support back into the 1.x branches.

  While the two servers listed there right now of this writing are test servers, 
I'm sure as time passes, there will be more servers in the mix, including 1.x 
servers.

  With the rework of 2.0 upcoming, and lots of those being major, I see it will 
be desirable for as many people as possible to play on those experimental (test) 
servers to find bugs, report balance issues, etc.  To facilitate that, it would 
be good for those servers to be listed in the metaserver.

  However, at the same time, it would not be desirable for the casual player to 
go onto one of those servers.

  So my thought is to add something like a test/expirimental server flag (T or E 
perhaps).  The client should not show those unless player clicks on button with 
something like 'show test servers'.

  I realize this could perhaps be done with looking at the version numbers or 
the cs/sc versions - problem is at some point 2.0 will stabilize, but there will 
still be need for test servers - someone making big changes to maps may not want 
to have to worry about fixing up guilds and apartments while making the changes. 
    It just seems having a flag would be the most sure proof way, and also 
removes any hard coded version checking in the client.

  Not to say that there shouldn't be - the client probably should filter out 
servers that don't have a compatible sc/cs version, but that shouldn't be hard 
coded - that is more like 'if cs_version from server does not match my 
cs_version, don't show' type of thing.





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