Re: client server part 1

["Eric A. Anderson" <eanders+@CMU.EDU>]

Mark Wedel <master@rahul.net> writes:
>  The game can be slowed down quite easily - there is some option in
> the config.h which determines how many micrseconds for each tick
> (right now, by default, it is 120,000 (about 8 ticks/second.))
I knew about this, but it's not clear that what I want to do is slow
the whole game down -- I think I just want to rebalance the speed.  I
am pretty sure that to let people play over a 14.4. modem you're going
to need to slow things down.

>  While you may have gotten a client/server model done, from the soudns of
>  it, it is not really an implementation that should be adopted.
I would disagree; for almost a year we've argued about client - server
and almost nothing has happened.  Anything you can put in some other
implementation of client server can be added on to this one.  I think
we will find we have to rewrite large sections of the code to get
things to work, the code is quite convinced it's running on an X
display.

>  The client should be handling the button and key presses, and not
> sending that information to the server.
I would partially agree, however for a first implementation there is
no problem with sending things to the server, and as the server code
gets cleaned up, more of these things can be moved to the client.

>  The client should parse all input (and does in the method described
> in the Protocol file) and just send commands to the server to do stuff.
I would agree in an ideal world, but I suspect that you'd find that if
we wait until everything is implemented according to the Protocol file
we will still not have client server for another 6 months because many
of the things in the protocol file require changes to lots of stuff in
the crossfire code.  Moreover, until you get it all going, you'll have
no idea of how it will perform.  For example, the current xpm stuff
that you're doing will be intolerably slow when someone starts up,
they will effectively hang the server for a really long time. Whereas
right now, I can be pretty sure by watching the size of the messages
that it won't hang the server for long.

>  I'll look over your code, but doubt I'll do much with it.
I think that would be a mistake, but if you can have the protocol
version of client server working in say 2-4 weeks, I couldn't care
less. 
          -Eric 
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