Making a shared cataclysm world. Need information about saves and worlds!

[Euphe]

Hello.

Recently I remembered that in old times there was a shared world via some ssh magic, including shared characters. I thought:“Why can’t I do the same with GIT?”.
And so I went on to try. Then I realised I can track the world files only, without tracking characters, so people will not be able to grief and the main problem of the ssh magic world (a huge list of 500+ characters that made it impossible to find your own) will not arise.

Here’s what happened:

Euphe/SharedCataclysm

http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1262384&p=46861231&viewfull=1#post46861231

It works. By trial and error I think I managed to separate the world related files and character related files.
However I am not sure.

At the moment I have three people playing it including me, it will be around five soon.

I want to ask a few questions.

1. What are these files?
   

2. What are maps/* files?

3. Seems like if different players affect the same map areas it causes merge conflicts that can’t be resolved automatically. How would you deal with it, considering that I want non-tech people (not familiar with git) to play too? Do you think always going with selecting the new version is a good idea?

4. Do you think a shared world like that is a good idea at all? What would you add to it, what would you change in it?

[vache]

The o. files are your overmaps. An overmap is the basic world data, it knows what goes where (house, road, garage, etc) among other things. The maps folder contains submap data. Submaps are small chunks (roughly 4 of them make up a house), that have actual layout data, items present, monsters, etc.

World sharing is interesting, but I don’t think git is the way to do it.

[Euphe]

[quote=“vache, post:2, topic:8533”]The o. files are your overmaps. An overmap is the basic world data, it knows what goes where (house, road, garage, etc) among other things. The maps folder contains submap data. Submaps are small chunks (roughly 4 of them make up a house), that have actual layout data, items present, monsters, etc.

World sharing is interesting, but I don’t think git is the way to do it.[/quote]
What would be a better tool?

I can imagine having a webserver to synchronise the files and somehow intelligently resolve conflicts (so if two characters drop two items on one tile the final version of the world will have a tile with both items).

Do you think it would be feasible to create a character, explore as much as possible forseeable overmaps, and then write it to the repo so all players have the same overmaps (cuts on the exloration, but makes for less conflicts)?

[TheFlame52]

This looks very interesting, will follow.

[AllisonW]

The folks who got me playing this game actually have a shared world. They take turns to avoid conflicts and share the folder on Google Drive.

[KA101]

If you can get onto the IRC, codehero had a shared-world server going at one point and was one of the contributors to the code supporting that. (Multiple players in the world at once, but your reality bubbles can’t touch, so one player in an area at a time. )

[AllisonW]

(Multiple players in the world at once, but your reality bubbles can’t touch, so one player in an area at a time. )

That sounds like a codepocalypse waiting to happen.

[Euphe]

If you can get onto the IRC, codehero had a shared-world server going at one point and was one of the contributors to the code supporting that. (Multiple players in the world at once, but your reality bubbles can’t touch, so one player in an area at a time. )

That’s very interesting, thanks.

[i2amroy]

[quote=“KA101, post:6, topic:8533”](Multiple players in the world at once, but your reality bubbles can’t touch, so one player in an area at a time. )

That sounds like a codepocalypse waiting to happen.[/quote]
IIRC there was some weirdness where if multiple players overlapped then it was just whoever’s game saved first or something similar.