(Instructions, that should exist)
DiSSC
It needs a lot of time to calculate just one score surface, but fortunately the required work can be easily distributed among many computers over the Internet. All you need is
Python and
pMARS and of course the DiSSC client.
Current Status
There are 16896 completed 50x50 patches (out of 16896). Currently it is worked on 0 patches. During the last 24 hours 0 patches were finished (0 patches during the last 60 minutes).
Do you need statistics? Then try the DiSSC user statistics ...
How do I use it?
After you have decompressed the archive, there is a new subdirectory called DiSSC. This directory contains everything, that you need. Simple edit the file dissc.cfg and change the path to your pMARS executable and start the client:
python dissc_client.py
Alternatively you can specify a name for your "team". That name will be mentioned, when the score surface and its data is published. By default the name "Anonymous" is used:
python dissc_client.py --user="name of the team"
Once the client is started it prints information about what it currently does to the command line.
How does it work?
The client connects to this server and requests a little 50x50-patch to work on. It shouldn't take longer than 2 hours to work on that patch - even on slow computers! Most computers will need less than 40 minutes. It then sends the generated data (less than 50 KiB/patch) back to the server. Then it continues with a new patch until it is stopped.
If the server doesn't get the data for a requested patch back within 4 hours, it simply assumes, that the client has stopped working on that patch (computer rebooted, client killed, earth destroyed, ...) and marks the patch again as free to work on. That way it is save to stop the client any time without loosing too much data. If the client can't connect to this server, it retries until it is killed, but with increasingly longer intervals.
Once all 256 patches of a score surface are calculated, I publish the score surface and its raw data. If you have ideas for new score surfaces, please submit them to
rec.games.corewar. I usually add the suggested fights to the queue.
Plans for the client
I will only add features to the client, if they are requested, but I plan to add the following as soon as I can. Feel free to suggest and implement more features :-)
- Offline mode: client requests several patches at once and data is sent back only at request.
- Support for other MARS such as exMARS.
- Realtime viewer of the currently calculated data.
