Writing my own front-end

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 13:22 — Phssthpok

Mostly for my own interest and to keep my hand in (I'm a retired programmer) I'm having a go at writing my own front-end for electricsheep (to handle the display, voting, etc. whilst electricsheep runs in the background with no display to handle the rendering).

I'm currently running the Linux v2.7b12 version of electricsheep whilst trying to work out how to build v2.7b28 from source.

After an exchange of e-mails with Scott Draves, he suggested (politely!) that I raise any questions on the forums so that other people can benefit. So, here's the next question!

Using the client/server protocols described in the wiki pages here I've got as far as downloading the list of sheep. The list contains 68 sheep of which 18 are loops and the remaining 50 are edges.

I assume that these are all the currently live sheep but my ~/.electricsheep folder currently contains nearly 600 AVI files. What are the rules for the deletion of dead sheep ? I know that v2.7b12 has some issues - is it not clearing them away properly ?

Tim (aka Phssthpok, possibly aka Pest!)

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 12:19 — spot

standard practice would be to

standard practice would be to delete the sheep that are oldest or have been played the most.

Thu, 07/21/2011 - 15:34 — spot

if you write your own client

if you write your own client you can make your own rules :).

if i understand correctly, you want a background/stock electricsheep to handle the downloading, so you shouldn't have to get the list of sheep to download at all. just have your client read the contents of ~/.electricsheep and play what it finds.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 01:46 — Phssthpok

Actually, I just feel I aught

Actually, I just feel I aught to run the rendering processing from electricsheep so that I'm not taking the benefits of other people's (computer's) work without supplying any processing to the effort myself.

If there's a combination of switches for electricsheep that just gets it to do that I'll be a happy bunny!

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 12:18 — spot

i am pretty sure the options

i am pretty sure the options give you total control over it. did you look at the man page or the --help output?

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 13:09 — Phssthpok

The man page offers options

The man page offers options --display-anim (to run without showing the animation) and --standalone (to run without accessing the server).

The --help output gives the same but refers to --no-animation rather than --display-anim.

I haven't actually tried either yet.

Fri, 07/22/2011 - 16:14 — spot

OK so if you turn off

OK so if you turn off animation it will still download and render for you, sounds like that's what you want.