-crawl- Crawl server using dgamelaunch now available
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
for those of you familiar with nethack.alt.org, it's basically the same
interface. The web side isn't nearly as polished yet; I only set this up
a couple of weeks ago, and I hope to get it looking better soon. You can
see it all at http://crawl.akrasiac.org. The server is running Stone Soup
0.1.6; tremendous thanks are due to Darshan and the Stone Soup team for
helping us out.
All games played there are logged and recorded, and can be watched as
you play or after you play by you or others. Your morguefiles are also
publically accessible on the web in the same place.
There are certainly still issues with this service, and there are things
that could be better. Feature requests and bug reports are welcome; you
can find me here, via email, or on freenode as raxvulpine in both #crawl
and ##crawl (...don't ask. :)
Hope you all enjoy it! (Personally, I look forward to watching some
stronger players; I've ascended at nethack 20 times and was looking
for something different, and crawl is both different and exciting.)
-r.
goo...@gmail.com
with telnet, how about a simple list of steps to download the required
programs try the Crawl server experience?
I imagine the most useful assumption would be windows users.
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
Ah, sorry! Windows users can download PuTTY from
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ and then make a
telnet connection (be careful, the default is ssh) to crawl.akrasiac.org.
You do not need to specify a username and password. If you want to use
the numpad to move, you may need to go to Settings->Terminal->Keyboard
and select "NetHack numeric keypad." (I'm not sure why.)
Once you're in, you should get a terminal window that says this:
Not logged in.
l) Login
r) Register new user
w) Watch games in progress
q) Quit
=>
Hit r to register a new user, enter a username and password and
email address, and then in the future you can hit l to login and
then you will have additional options, specifically:
Logged in as: rax
c) Change password
e) Change email address
o) Edit option file
w) Watch games in progress
p) Play crawl!
q) Quit
=>
The first two should be obvious; "Edit option file" takes you to a
crippled little vi and you can edit your init.txt file. Watching games
in progress does just that; try it, it's fun. (There may still be a few
screen refresh issues, though we've worked a lot of them out.) Hit p to
play crawl, which is the cool part about all this.
You might then want to see a character dump, if you wanted to,
say, ask for help on this very newsgroup. Hit # as you would
normally, then fire up your web browser of choice, and go to
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/username/username.txt . There it
is! Wow! You'll also find your morguefile there if you die. Well, it's
crawl. When you die. Morguefiles (and ttyrecs, a recording of your
game that can be watched with a utility such as the brilliant ipbt:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/ipbt/) are indexed by the
time that you finished the game, so it should be easy to figure out which
character is which. (If you go poking around other people's directories,
you may find weird numerical directories, but that's because they were
betatesting before everything was set up properly.)
You can hit S to save as normal and your game will resume when you next
log in and ask to play. Macros will also be saved, so if you're a crazy
spellcaster or something, have no fear! (Editing the macro file by hand
is not currently allowed.)
If you have any other questions, please post or ask and I'd be happy to
clarify.
Hope you enjoy!
-r.
B0rsuk
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon wrote:
> You can play with telnet crawl.akrasiac.org; it's using dgamelaunch, so
> for those of you familiar with nethack.alt.org, it's basically the same
> interface. The web side isn't nearly as polished yet; I only set this up
Does it save game on timeout ? If my connection dies, what happens to
my character ? I lost several promising characters on previous crawl
server just because my connection died. One of them was in the process
of slaughtering Zot:5.
Darshan Shaligram
> Rachel Elizabeth Dillon wrote:
>> You can play with telnet crawl.akrasiac.org; it's using
>> dgamelaunch, so for those of you familiar with nethack.alt.org,
>> it's basically the same interface. The web side isn't nearly as
>> polished yet; I only set this up
> Does it save game on timeout ? If my connection dies, what happens
> to my character ?
[...]
Yes, one of the things done in 0.1.6 was to make Crawl handle SIGHUP
by saving the game and exiting.
Even with older Crawls, your character probably wasn't lost because
Crawl saves the game on every level transition, so if Crawl dies, you
only lose what you've done on the current level.
The server is a lot of fun, especially watching other people play.
--
Darshan Shaligram <scin...@gmail.com> Deus vult
B0rsuk
> > to my character ?
> [...]
>
> Yes, one of the things done in 0.1.6 was to make Crawl handle SIGHUP
> by saving the game and exiting.
>
> Even with older Crawls, your character probably wasn't lost because
> Crawl saves the game on every level transition, so if Crawl dies, you
> only lose what you've done on the current level.
The previous server deffinitely DIDN'T do that.
Why not ssh ?
> The server is a lot of fun, especially watching other people play.
Do I get to see if there are any people watching *me* ? Sounds like a
very useful feature.
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
>> > Does it save game on timeout ? If my connection dies, what happens
>> > to my character ?
>> [...]
>>
>> Yes, one of the things done in 0.1.6 was to make Crawl handle SIGHUP
>> by saving the game and exiting.
>>
>> Even with older Crawls, your character probably wasn't lost because
>> Crawl saves the game on every level transition, so if Crawl dies, you
>> only lose what you've done on the current level.
>
> The previous server deffinitely DIDN'T do that.
> Why not ssh ?
...because telnet is easier and because that's what dgamelaunch already
does? It's not like security is essential here...
>> The server is a lot of fun, especially watching other people play.
>
> Do I get to see if there are any people watching *me* ? Sounds like a
> very useful feature.
No, unfortunately. NetHack has built-in mail where watching players can
talk to you; Crawl has no such thing. The usual social solution to this
technical problem is to discuss games in progress over IRC or some other
real-time medium.
You'd be surprised how often you are being watched, at least, I'm always
surprised to find out how many people are watching me.
-r.
Darshan Shaligram
| Darshan wrote:
[disconnected, lost game]
>> Even with older Crawls, your character probably wasn't lost because
>> Crawl saves the game on every level transition, so if Crawl dies,
>> you only lose what you've done on the current level.
> The previous server deffinitely DIDN'T do that.
It's extremely unlikely that it didn't, but Crawl doesn't zip up the
individual savefiles when it dies, so it's possible that it just
didn't see the zip and thought there was no save. Stone Soup (at least
circa 0.1.3 or newer) will load saves whether they're zipped or not,
maybe older Crawls could not - Haran's cleaned up a lot of the
savefile code.
goo...@gmail.com
B0rsuk I watched your dwarf nearlydie to a troll then, double zapped
and killed by Erolcha.
I must say you play like a hammerhead!
Discretion is the better part of valour.
Rubinstein
> On 2006-12-20, B0rsuk <monu...@manta.univ.gda.pl> wrote:
>>
>> Do I get to see if there are any people watching *me* ? Sounds like a
>> very useful feature.
>
> No, unfortunately. NetHack has built-in mail where watching players
> can talk to you; Crawl has no such thing. The usual social solution to
> this technical problem is to discuss games in progress over IRC or
> some other real-time medium.
I've just did my very first steps on the telnet server (plays a little
bit slow, I'm missing my sounds and some Lua goodies, but I think I'll
*love* it!). While watching a game, I pressed 'm' (expecting to see
character details. Btw, will it be possible in future versions to see
other char's current dats like e.g. inventory?) and was encouraged to
write a message. At this time I didn't want that (I guess it's a dead
funktion anyway, isn't it?) and tried to quit with blank as the menu
told me, which only worked after several tries (finally got some
message, something like "this scroll is blank"). Check this out, please.
Maybe a bug.
All in all a very promising way to play (and watch!) Crawl, even
better that it's actually a fresh Stone Soup version.
Thanks a lot! :-)
Rubinstein
--
Der (Um)Weg ist das Ziel
goo...@gmail.com
the sound in crawl.
Ive heard of this feature but regardless of what I do to the init file,
I cannot get sound for dungeoncrawl.
How is it done?
goo...@gmail.com
I make changes, but can't exit the page once Im in
Rubinstein
> Rubinstein please tell the general crawl public (me) how to activate
> the sound in crawl.
The general crawl public fortunately has a valid (I hope so!?)
mail-adress so we can do the whole operation via mail. If there's even
more public interest for sound in Crawl, so tell it now and tell it loud
(exactly here). For more than 5 candidates I will post it here,
otherwise mail should be sufficiant.
Keep in mind that I just can talk about how I get sound for Crawl in
Linux, Windows is quite another story, maybe much easier...
Furthermore, though it works perfectly for me, I can't guaranty that it
will also work for you.
> Ive heard of this feature but regardless of what I do to the init
> file, I cannot get sound for dungeoncrawl. How is it done?
It's not just the init file. Before we can start, please answer the
following questions:
Are you using Linux (and Crawl for Linux of course. You're posting via
google groups, so I can't see your OS)?
Do you compile Crawl for yourself (no binary)?
Do you have the 'play' script on your system?
Check it out with 'play [path to your sound file] [soundfile].wav'.
If you can hear your soundfile and answer everything else with yes, we
have green light. The rest will be easy, just some formalities.
You can also contact me directly (my adress is valid).
Please be patient, I'm pretty busy right now.
Rubinstein
> How is the init file options page saved?
>
> I make changes, but can't exit the page once Im in
In what place (folder) is your init file? Do you have write permission
there?
My one is in /opt/crawl/bin (this is the old path, meanwhile deprecated
I think). My dirty (and unsecure) solution was simply changing ownership
of the whole crawl folder to my local user. I don't recommend that on a
multiuser production system.
John Harris
> You can play with telnet crawl.akrasiac.org; it's using dgamelaunch, so
> for those of you familiar with nethack.alt.org, it's basically the same
> interface. The web side isn't nearly as polished yet; I only set this up
> a couple of weeks ago, and I hope to get it looking better soon. You can
> see it all at http://crawl.akrasiac.org. The server is running Stone Soup
> 0.1.6; tremendous thanks are due to Darshan and the Stone Soup team for
> helping us out.
Heads up! I think I'm going to mention this in @ Play this week....
- John H.
Anthony Boyd
Rubinstein wrote:
> > Ive heard of this feature but regardless of what I do to the init
> > file, I cannot get sound for dungeoncrawl. How is it done?
>
> It's not just the init file. Before we can start, please answer the
> following questions:
>
> Are you using Linux (and Crawl for Linux of course. You're posting via
> google groups, so I can't see your OS)?
> Do you compile Crawl for yourself (no binary)?
> Do you have the 'play' script on your system?
> Check it out with 'play [path to your sound file] [soundfile].wav'.
> If you can hear your soundfile and answer everything else with yes, we
> have green light. The rest will be easy, just some formalities.
I had no idea one could convince sound to play thru a telnet
connection. (Besides a beep, of course.) But I sure am glad that
nethack doesn't play any of its so called divine music as I'd go crazy
when crushing things in the drawbridge.
-sawtooth
Rubinstein
> How is the init file options page saved?
>
> I make changes, but can't exit the page once Im in
Ah wait, do you mean the "edit option file" page on the telnet server?
Basic keys for vi are working here:
:q! => quit editor without saving
:wq => write and quit
I => Insert
R => Replace
Looks like you need vi commands.
Admittedly, though I use and like vim, I entirely skipped the experience
of using vi. Is it possible to replace it with vim? Vi users won't miss
anything, but vim-only users will have a hard time...
This "edit option file" page points to an url which explains a lot of
possible options in the init file, but not how to edit this file on the
telnet server. I'm curious how most Windows users, who usually know vi
or vim just by name at best, would handle this. ;-)
Rubinstein
>
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> [sound for Dungeon Crawl]
>
> I had no idea one could convince sound to play thru a telnet
> connection.
Me too. I thought we're talking about a local crawl installation with
sound (and I mean *sound*, not music).
goo...@gmail.com
Roguelikes are so esoteric...
Rachel Elizabeth Dillon
> goo...@gmail.com wrote:
>> How is the init file options page saved?
>>
>> I make changes, but can't exit the page once Im in
>
> Ah wait, do you mean the "edit option file" page on the telnet server?
> Basic keys for vi are working here:
>:q! => quit editor without saving
>:wq => write and quit
> I => Insert
> R => Replace
>
> Looks like you need vi commands.
> Admittedly, though I use and like vim, I entirely skipped the experience
> of using vi. Is it possible to replace it with vim? Vi users won't miss
> anything, but vim-only users will have a hard time...
Not without pulling things into my chroot that I'm not comfortable with
exposing to random telnet users, sorry. :)
> This "edit option file" page points to an url which explains a lot of
> possible options in the init file, but not how to edit this file on the
> telnet server. I'm curious how most Windows users, who usually know vi
> or vim just by name at best, would handle this. ;-)
Usually either by asking or by using the NAO web configurator, which sadly
in this case does not (yet? no promises) exist.
Sorry for the inconvenience...
-r.
erisdiscordia
Did you and Rubinstein eventually manage to get this figured out
together?
e.
Rubinstein
Seems we have a little confusion here. What are we talking about? Sound
for a local Linux copy of Crawl? Then I can tell you something.
But meanwhile I'm afraid, you and goobeef, who originally made this
request (and who haven't yet contacted me btw), where actually talking
about sound on dgamelaunch!
That would be tricky (to say the least). I can only imagine 2 different
basic attempts: the first one would generate sound directly on the
server and then "somehow" pipe that sound through the telnet client.
Besides that I don't know if that's possible at all, I would expect
massive performance (including bandwidth) problems in no time, so I
think we can skip that.
The other more realistic attempt would be to pipe only the sound
commands through telnet. But it's not up to me to say whether and how
this could work, that's expert stuff...
This all would be quite another story (and a 3th way if you want so) if
someone would create a real Crawl client, which then would communicate
with the server. I'm afraid telnet is too primitive for things like
that.
Haran Pilpel
[sound through dgamelaunch]
> That would be tricky (to say the least). I can only imagine 2 different
> basic attempts: the first one would generate sound directly on the
> server and then "somehow" pipe that sound through the telnet client.
> Besides that I don't know if that's possible at all, I would expect
> massive performance (including bandwidth) problems in no time, so I
> think we can skip that.
>
> The other more realistic attempt would be to pipe only the sound
> commands through telnet. But it's not up to me to say whether and how
> this could work, that's expert stuff...
These are both impossible, (un)fortunately. Telnet only accepts
character sequences: you can't send it sound files or shell commands
and expect it to execute them - if it could, it would be a major
security flaw.
> This all would be quite another story (and a 3th way if you want so) if
> someone would create a real Crawl client, which then would communicate
> with the server. I'm afraid telnet is too primitive for things like
> that.
There have been attempts to do something similar for nethack, which has
a considerably bigger community, and I don't think there's a complete
solution yet. So this is probably for the relatively distant future.
Haran