Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!gatech!emory!dtscp1!joel
From: joel@dtscp1.UUCP (Joel Rives)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.games.bugs
Subject: Re: Yet Another Galactic Bloodshed Problem...
Keywords: AGH!
Message-ID: <688@dtscp1.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 89 17:34:14 GMT
References: <12985@ut-emx.UUCP>
Reply-To: joel@dtscp1.UUCP (Joel Rives)
Organization: Digital Transmission Systems (a subsidiary of DCA), Duluth, GA
Lines: 24

In article <12985@ut-emx.UUCP> ted@ut-emx.UUCP (Ted Woodward) writes:
>Also, some docs on exactly what the daemon does would be useful--
>I don't particularly want to plod thru its sources right now...

The source for the actual demon itself is fairly small and contained
in the file daemon.c. Basically, it forks a process which seperates itself
from the invokers terminal process (so, that it will persist after the
user that has invoked the daemon has logged off). This child process
then sets up a state and puts itself to sleep for a short while. When
the process wakes up, it compares a state variable (setable in tweakables.h)
to the current time stamp of the host machine. If it is time to run the 
turn, this daemon calls the function doturn() to handle the necissary
dirty work and then puts itself back to sleep again.

The same sort of functionality could be had very simply by making use of the
Unix 'at' command (on Unix machines -- of course :-). This method has an
advantage over the daemon process in that it is independant of whether the
machine goes down at some point during the day. Unless the daemon process
is set up to be automatically started when the machine comes up, the turns
will cease to be updated until such time as the game controller can log on 
and start the daemon again.


Joel