[pbmserv-dev] an idea of mine

[Douglas Zander <dzander@solaria.sol.net>]

Hello, I have an idea that I have been trying to work out for some time.
Let me know if this sounds silly or not.  As you will see, I have a
lot of time on my hands and a lot of big ideas...  :-)
Here it goes.
What if we could design a type of portfolio of our games and our gaming
activities on this server?  What I mean is we have a file that is on
Richard's server that has certain commands that control how many games
we play, which games we play, and all that stuff.  It would control whether
or not we wish to automatically start another game with a certain player
that we like to challenge; for example, if I always want at least one game
of backgammon going with a certain friend, then when we finish a game, another
would be automatically started.  We could also have it always challenge
certain players who are within a certain range of our choosing.  For example,
if we always want to have a game going with the top 10 players according
to rating or the top 10 players according to winning percentage, or the 10
closest players (5 above and 5 below) to our own rating.  
I think this could also be programmed to start certain games according to
outcomes of previous wins.  This would be convenient for tournaments;  Just
have a tournament director type in the names of all the players and the
portfolio would figure out the first round match-ups and any bye and then
it would automatically start the second round match-ups and report the winners
of the first round to the director, and so on and so on. 
We would be able to edit our portfolio at any time or even keep more than
one portfolio and simply send in a command to decide which one(s) to activate
and which one(s) to temporarily deactivate.
 ======= example =======
%portfolio v1.0
%player dzander
%name myfirstportfolio
%game backgammon
# comment - Richard wouldn't mind always playing me!  :-)
always_challenge rrognlie 
always_challenge anotherplayer -match=11
always_challenge @TOP_10
limit 20
%game plakoto
always_challenge @TOP_10
always_challenge hassan -match=6
limit 40
%game powerdrain
# the following only plays one game at a time
# first someplayer, then after that game is finished then anotherplayer
# then finally yetanotherplayer. then back up to the top - someplayer
rotate amoung
{
 challenge someplayer
 challenge anotherplayer
 challenge yetanotherplayer
}
limit 1
%game backgammon -tournament -round_robin
dzander
rrognlie
someotherplayer
anotherplayer
stillanother
yetanother
%end
 =========================

Ambitious?  Yes. 
Am I going to program it?  If you players would really want it and
 Richard doesn't mind, I'd look into it.

--
 Douglas Zander            | 
 dzander@solaria.sol.net   | 
 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA |