Ah yes! I was meaning to talk a bit about this issue.
@p
I am toying with three options for vex multiplayer. Remember, I have a decent network driver running and tested and it works reasonably well. Not fantastic, but it seems not too bad.
@p
1- Global database only: in this option, only the global database is networked. This means more or less that you don't really directly interact with other players. You see if they buy or sell something, or other things, but you can't shoot them or hunt monsters with them.
@p
2- Everything: this is more what you think of with networked games. I still like this option. Basically, I am trying still to think how to get monsters to synchronize. That's the only major issue above and beyond all the issues in 1. In this view, it's maybe not such a huge issue. I need to split certain drones into client/server. I would, ideally, like to be able to create a "serversplit" drone and be done with it. So that, any object I wanted to exist synchronized I could just wrap in a serversplit drone and be done with it. Sound impossible? I'm not so sure. I think actually it may be more possible than it first seems, and if I can implement such a beast, this is definitely what I would do.
@p
3- Nothing.
@p
The bottom line is, for 2, I need to have a little clearer picture in my head of what these things look like. The biggest thing that has to happen, is that the drone has to be able to operate in client or server mode. The way to design/test this thing is that, if something is a serversplit, then it actually generates two drones: one to marshall object creation/management on the client side, and the server drone which actually controls the objects. Once this is working locally, it's not such a major issue to get it to work globally.
@p
I'm mulling this over for a few days anyhow...
2004-12-06