Re: gnibbles, choosing time to spend on level

[Callum McKenzie <callum physics otago ac nz>]

On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 11:39 +0100, Luke Page wrote:
> Not too push the boat too much but the suggestion given last month to
> another guy to make it so that in multiplayer when one worm dies, it
> stays there but the live worm(s) can carry on (or possibly when more
> than 1 player is left it carries on although one person is dead)... is
> this something you would like to see and would you want it as an
> option or hard-coded?
Because of the whole network game thing we are going to have to have
multiple rules sets (i.e. newer versions would have to play with the
rules when connected to older versions) so within the game there has to
be some sort of option, although it should probably only be exposed in
the new network game dialog as a choice of which rules to play.

So, in response to your other email about network games. There has to be
ruleset negotiation in the protocol (I had the vague feeling there is
room for it, but I haven't looked at the code recently). To keep it
simple, a set of versioned rulesets where each clients supports
everything up to their version is probably the way to go. If the
parameters are generalised internally this shouldn't be a problem. 

As far as enabling/disabling preferences, my desire is that every game
can always have its preferences altered. For single-player games
settings which change the form of the game start a new game. For
multi-player games there should be some UI to negotiate the end of the
current game (in the first instance it should tell the person fiddling
with the settings that they are about to break something and get
confirmation before telling their opponent so they can avoid doing
appearing stupid).

In the case of the worms-hang-around suggestion, my thoughts are that
the worm should probably hang around, but slowly decay (i.e. the end
disappears as normal, but the head isn't progressing).

(I hope all this makes sense, I've written this in a bit of a hurry.)

 - Callum