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New Tilehack Server

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superdav

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Aug 5, 2010, 1:13:48 AM8/5/10
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I've taken Jack Whitham's work at http://www.jwhitham.org.uk/tilehack/
and setup a public server running Tilehack and integrating it with all
the popular social websites like facebook and twitter.


Check it out at http://amuletofyendor.com . Feedback would be greatly
appreciated.

As far as I know this is the only server running tilehack at this
time. I've also setup other roguelikes at the same site. Please let me
know of any issues you run into.

Alexandre Bacquart

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Aug 5, 2010, 6:00:16 AM8/5/10
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The underlying nethack server seems down at the time. Under Iceweasel
(Debian Linux), there's a hidden message (black text on black
background) but selecting it makes it appear:

"Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to
maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."

Anyway, it looks promising in the social aspects (I tried with a google
account, that part seemed to work). One might just hope he can switch to
old-school tiles or he'll miss his @ very soon...

As always, it is great to see some efforts to bring Nethack into our
"polymorphic" world, that way or another. Nethack with graphics, Nethack
with sounds (well at least locally with some little effort), now Nethack
with "Web2.0"... sounds good to me.


--
Alex

superdav

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Aug 6, 2010, 1:56:47 AM8/6/10
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On Aug 5, 4:00 am, Alexandre Bacquart <tek...@free.DELETEME.fr> wrote:
> On 08/05/2010 07:13 AM, superdav wrote:
>
> > I've taken Jack Whitham's work athttp://www.jwhitham.org.uk/tilehack/

> > and setup a public server running Tilehack and integrating it with all
> > the popular social websites like facebook and twitter.
>
> > Check it out athttp://amuletofyendor.com. Feedback would be greatly

> > appreciated.
>
> > As far as I know this is the only server running tilehack at this
> > time. I've also setup other roguelikes at the same site. Please let me
> > know of any issues you run into.
>
> The underlying nethack server seems down at the time. Under Iceweasel
> (Debian Linux), there's a hidden message (black text on black
> background) but selecting it makes it appear:
>
> "Service Temporarily Unavailable
>
> The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to
> maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."
>
> Anyway, it looks promising in the social aspects (I tried with a google
> account, that part seemed to work). One might just hope he can switch to
> old-school tiles or he'll miss his @ very soon...
>
> As always, it is great to see some efforts to bring Nethack into our
> "polymorphic" world, that way or another. Nethack with graphics, Nethack
> with sounds (well at least locally with some little effort), now Nethack
> with "Web2.0"... sounds good to me.
>
> --
> Alex

I just fixed the Service Temporarily Unavailable problem. Not sure
what happened but the shellinabox process crashed. I restarted it and
it should be good to go. Perhaps a sudden surge of users crashed it.
I'll keep an eye on it.

Alexandre Bacquart

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Aug 6, 2010, 5:16:03 PM8/6/10
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On 08/06/2010 07:56 AM, superdav wrote:
> I just fixed the Service Temporarily Unavailable problem. Not sure
> what happened but the shellinabox process crashed. I restarted it and
> it should be good to go. Perhaps a sudden surge of users crashed it.
> I'll keep an eye on it.

Ok, it worked for me.

- tiles seem to be a bit slow to gather at the beginning.

- for identified uncursed inventory items, text color is white on yellow
background, which seriously lacks of contrast for a default setting. It
may be very annoying for those discovering Nethack.

- when I died, Nethack was unable to access to
/var/games/nethack/record. You should fix it soon if you want people to
compete a little :)

--
Alex

Alexandre Bacquart

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Aug 6, 2010, 5:32:31 PM8/6/10
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On 08/06/2010 11:16 PM, Alexandre Bacquart wrote:
> - for identified uncursed inventory items, text color is white on yellow
> background, which seriously lacks of contrast for a default setting. It
> may be very annoying for those discovering Nethack.

The options file cannot be saved. You click saved, there is confirmation
but when you come back, nothing was saved.

The vi-like instructions in the file are confusing. No ESC here and no :q.


--
Alex

Rob Cypher aka "The Anti-Bob"

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Aug 10, 2010, 4:02:03 PM8/10/10
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I keep getting "Waiting for access to /var/games/nethack/perm", which is
repeated 10 times, then it dumps back to the beginning.
--
Rob Cypher
Livejournal: http://robcypher.livejournal.com
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/robcyphercollective
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/robcypher
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/robcypher
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Music Reviews: http://apps.facebook.com/visualcdrack/people/1713595594
Book Reviews: http://apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/people/1713595594
Movie Reviews: http://apps.facebook.com/dvdshelf/people/1713595594
TV Reviews: http://apps.facebook.com/livingsocial-tv/people/1713595594
Video Game Reviews: http://apps.facebook.com/videogamerack/people/1713595594
RATINGS GUIDE: ***** - essential **** - must have *** - worth a look
** - for fans only * and under - Crap
WARNING - THE SHROOMERY IS FULL OF RACISTS. Proof is presented here: http://robcypher.livejournal.com/68904.html

MadManMoon

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Aug 11, 2010, 1:32:12 PM8/11/10
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On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:02:03 -0400, "Rob Cypher aka \"The Anti-Bob\""
<bal...@aol.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:32:31 +0200, Alexandre Bacquart <tek...@free.DELETEME.fr> wrote:
>
>>On 08/06/2010 11:16 PM, Alexandre Bacquart wrote:
>>> - for identified uncursed inventory items, text color is white on yellow
>>> background, which seriously lacks of contrast for a default setting. It
>>> may be very annoying for those discovering Nethack.
>>
>>The options file cannot be saved. You click saved, there is confirmation
>>but when you come back, nothing was saved.
>>
>>The vi-like instructions in the file are confusing. No ESC here and no :q.
>
>I keep getting "Waiting for access to /var/games/nethack/perm", which is
>repeated 10 times, then it dumps back to the beginning.


So, let me see if I get this right...

Bob is not your uncle?

Hahahahaha!

superdav

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Aug 13, 2010, 12:15:16 AM8/13/10
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On Aug 10, 2:02 pm, "Rob Cypher aka \"The Anti-Bob\""

<bals...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:32:31 +0200, Alexandre Bacquart <tek...@free.DELETEME.fr> wrote:
> >On 08/06/2010 11:16 PM, Alexandre Bacquart wrote:
> >> - for identified uncursed inventory items, text color is white on yellow
> >> background, which seriously lacks of contrast for a default setting. It
> >> may be very annoying for those discovering Nethack.
>
> >The options file cannot be saved. You click saved, there is confirmation
> >but when you come back, nothing was saved.
>
> >The vi-like instructions in the file are confusing. No ESC here and no :q.
>
> I keep getting "Waiting for access to /var/games/nethack/perm", which is
> repeated 10 times, then it dumps back to the beginning.
> --

I fixed it by removing perm_lock. Never seen it happen before. The
record_lock has been a problem before but not this. Does anybody know
what it used for? Has anybody whose run a server before know how these
lock files keep getting stuck?

AllInTheChi

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Aug 13, 2010, 3:44:04 AM8/13/10
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On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:15:16 -0700 (PDT), superdav <super...@gmail.com>
wrote:

perm

permissions maybe?

Probably part of some authentication routine.

Pat Rankin

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Aug 13, 2010, 3:15:01 PM8/13/10
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On Aug 12, 9:15 pm, superdav <superda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I fixed it by removing perm_lock. Never seen it happen before. The
> record_lock has been a problem before but not this. Does anybody know
> what it used for? Has anybody whose run a server before know how these
> lock files keep getting stuck?

"perm" is an empty file used to prevent two processes
from starting nethack at the same time, in order to prevent
two different processes from trying to use the same file name
for their level files which would then end up clobbering each
others' games. (For configurations using the names alock.*,
block.*, clock.*, etc to limit number of simultaneous players,
the situation is obvious; for others it still matters in case
both processes are running under the same user id and have
chosen the same character name. If they simultaneously tried
to check whether there was another game in progress for that
character they could both come up with a "no" answer and then
accidentally create a "yes" situation.)

When one process succeeds in locking that dummy file, it
can start (or restore) but other processes trying to start
nethack have to wait until the lock is released. Ordinarily
that release happens immediately, as soon as a name for the
level files is chosen. However, if the first process dies or
suffers network disconnect before releasing the lock, the
second and later ones are out of luck. (The situation with
updating the score file "record" is similar, although in its
case the actual file is being locked to prevent simultaneous
updates into the same file, instead of locking a placeholder
which stands in for arbitrary file names in the playground
directory. And it can up end staying locked while the player
scrolls through old scores, giving a longer window when the
process might go away--or just become idle while sitting at
nethack's --More-- prompt--without having released its lock.)

I don't remember exactly, but I think NetHack only throws
away an old lock file as stale if it's been sitting around
for at least 72 hours (that may be specific to the original
Unix port, but if so it's probably been inherited by others).
Otherwise, it relies on manual intervention by the game
administrator. If it ran on just a single version of a single
operating system it could handle this situation in a much saner
manner, but file locking capabilities and process detection
capabilities vary wildly across supported platforms (especially
when you toss in things like using NFS to access remote disks)
and the only one-size-fits-all solution is "let someone else
do it." The "someone else" in this case being you.... Since
you're using a single version of a single operating system (at
least at any one moment) you may be able to automate a viable
solution. Most folks running public servers probably have.

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