/dev/null/nethack Tournament with problems

[robin]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Hi all,

Around this time we usually post our standard announcement that the annual
NetHack tournament will start at midnight on Halloween and call for volunteers
to run game servers. While this continues to be the case, this year's
announcement will be a bit different.

A few weeks ago the tournament control server saw two hard drives fail on the
same night, just after the hard drive in my workstation which had the server
backup on it failed. We have sent the server hard drives to a recovery
facility and they have mostly recovered one of them, but of course most of the
tournament system was not in the recovered portion and the facility is not
optimistic about the chances of getting much more off the other disk. We will
be sending in my workstation disk as well if they can't get enough back from
the remaining server disk, but while we're hopeful that they can recover it
we're not gonna' hold our breath.

(The recovery folks _did_ get back our patch development directory, including
the new patch code for this year's first annual Challenge trophy, so at least
we won't have to recreate the patch kit. But honestly the patch kit is the
smallest and easiest to re-create section of the whole system, so this isn't as
marvelous as it may sound. ;-)

So, we need to start preparing for the possibility that we'll need to re-write
pretty much the entire tournament system from scratch this year (which we will
do if we have to; the tournament WILL happen this year, *&$$(*&^ it).

So, we need to ask any of y'all who may have copies of the tournament materials
(server code, web site caches, etc.) to please get hold of us at
"admin@nethack.devnull.net" so we can start gauging how much may need to be
re-built.

Any of y'all who are Perl-capable and feel like helping code the replacement
system (if we have to do so) please email us as well; we should pretty easily
be able to split the system up into modules with well defined interfaces so
coding it with a larger group than just Matt and I should be doable.

Oh, and the drive recovery is costing us over $3,000 so while we've never
really pursued donations if any of y'all _had_ planned to donate this year and
feel like doing so a bit early the address for that is "nethack@devnull.net".

Thanks all,
-robin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

You can see it in action by telnetting to nethack.alt.org. See the
games played at http://alt.org/nethack/.

In this newsgroup, and on irc (address below), the server is commonly
referred to as NAO.

There is code at ftp.alt.org/pub/dgamelaunch, but that code is a couple
of versions old. The latest version is held by the dgamelaunch crew,
probably jilles or joshk, found on #nethack at irc.freenode.org.
(Actually, I need to get the latest version from them so that I can put
it at ftp.alt.org.)

Paxed (also at irc.freenode.org, or at same name @alt.org) probably
also has the latest code version.

Everything is gpl'd, and you're more than welcome to use it if you
wish.

-drew

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

>I heartily endorse that. Besides the ability to watch games live, another
>big advantage of dgamelaunch is that there is no "don't record my game"
>option.

There's no technical reason why that couldn't be done in dgamelaunch.
It was just a policy decision on my part that went along well with the
"every game is viewable" policy as well.

If someone wanted to do something different, it would be a minor code
change.

So far, I haven't really received pushback on the lack of hidden games
on NAO. In fact, the openness has been received quite well, I think.

-drew

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

robin wrote:
> So, we need to ask any of y'all who may have copies of the tournament materials
> (server code, web site caches, etc.) to please get hold of us at
> "admin@nethack.devnull.net" so we can start gauging how much may need to be
> re-built.

Why not use dgamelaunch (the code nao uses) for the tournament this year? That
way, us mere mortals could bath in the glory of watching the demigods playing,
too
Obviously, I'd leave the mail patch out.

Greetings,
Benjamin
--
#!/bin/sh #!/bin/bash #!/bin/tcsh #!/bin/csh #!/bin/kiss #!/bin/ksh
#!/bin/pdksh #!/usr/bin/perl #!/usr/bin/python #!/bin/zsh #!/bin/ash

Feel at home? Got some of them? Want to show some magic?

http://shellscripts.org

 

[robin]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

I'm not sure what it is, but if we have to re-code this year I'll look into it.
Can you send me a link to some description of it and where I can download it?

Thanks,
-robin

In message <433303a0$0$56$9b4e6d93@newsread2.arcor-online.net>, Benjamin
Schieder wrote:
...
> Why not use dgamelaunch (the code nao uses) for the tournament this year?
> That
> way, us mere mortals could bath in the glory of watching the demigods
> playing,
> too
> Obviously, I'd leave the mail patch out.
>
> Greetings,
> Benjamin

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Benjamin Schieder wrote:
> Why not use dgamelaunch (the code nao uses) for the tournament this year? That
> way, us mere mortals could bath in the glory of watching the demigods playing,
> too

I heartily endorse that. Besides the ability to watch games live, another
big advantage of dgamelaunch is that there is no "don't record my game"
option.

> Obviously, I'd leave the mail patch out.

And add turncount and conducts patches.

(The "most unique deaths" patch could be added too, although IMO we are
better off without it.)


--
"Ruleless 'law' will be a political weapon and control of the
judiciary will therefore be a political prize. 'Democracy' will
consist of the chaotic struggle to influence decision makers who are
not responsive to elections." -- Robert Bork

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Quoting robin <usenet@unrated.net>:
[Tournament trashed hard drives]
>Oh, and the drive recovery is costing us over $3,000 so while we've never
>really pursued donations if any of y'all _had_ planned to donate this year and
>feel like doing so a bit early the address for that is "nethack@devnull.net".

If we do, will you buy something to take backups on? :-/
--
David Damerell <damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Thursday, September.

 

[robin]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (More info?)

Heh.

We actually had _two_ backup copies, one on the secondary disk that also failed
and one on a disk in my workstation that had failed a few weeks prior. It was
a _very_ bad summer for disks at my house.

A friend has donated an additional server, which just needs a cooling system to
be usable, so we'll actually be setting the new rig up as two seperate machines
(a primary and a backup) rather than primary and backup disks in a single
machine.

We'll also be backing the tournament up to my brother's server in Oklahoma now,
in case something takes down both the servers in Oakland.

And I just got a DVDburner, so we can archive the system off after each year's
tournament just in case. ;-)

-robin

In message <GNe*ndqZq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting robin <usenet@unrated.net>:
> [Tournament trashed hard drives]
> >Oh, and the drive recovery is costing us over $3,000 so while we've never
> >really pursued donations if any of y'all _had_ planned to donate this year
> and
> >feel like doing so a bit early the address for that is
> "nethack@devnull.net".
>
> If we do, will you buy something to take backups on? :-/