Hi Bradley
> The new net engine is feature complete. There
Congratulations!
> master? I have kept my branch up-to-date with the master so it should be
> fairly simple. In terms of the ramifications of the changes, heres the
> list:
Great you kept up with the master.
> 1) Old maps and game saves are no longer compatible. There is copy and
> paste
> functionality that will make re-making maps very quick, but it still has
> to
> be done
I have created a simple patch for Alpha 23 that will save terrain features to a file. In my branch, there is a feature that will read these terrain features from the file. Its all wrapped around the I key in the map editor.
Basically, load up a map in the patched Alpha 23, hit I, create a new map of the same size in the new editor, hit I again, and voila. There is resemblance to copy and paste, you copy (using I) from the old, then paste (using I) to the new. Buildings and units still have to be placed manually but as for resources and terrain, which is by far the bulk of the work, its done for you.
Is this like "map editor loads old maps like new ones"? So I can load the map and save it again to copy/paste? Or how exactly is it done?
> 2) Old networking is no longer compatible. We can make a new server to run
> side by side with the existing one to cater to our tests
If you get server separated from client so it doesn't need X to compile I volunteer to host a server on my vps.
I've looked into it briefly but I'm not really sure how I can do it with our autotools configuration. I will make it my next priority to figure it out.
Also I remember talks about routing automatisms. I know they are not in place yet but what's your state on that? Will it be possible to arbitrarily spawn these servers so they register with the master yog server and do routing for random games? I guess as server hardware is a thing many people want to help out with, we should make this possible.
Greetings, Leo
Yes I did spin around allot of routing automatics, and your idea is a pretty good one and I might incorporate it into my plan. Most of these are low on my list of priorities due to the fact that they are not really needed yet. when are community comes like that of TA Springs community (with over 120 people on at any given time, with clans and such), then a new model will definitely be required.
The optimum model, taking your idea into account, is as follows (in order of priority):
1) Supplementary servers that can connect to the main server, accept forwarded clients and such in a similar manner to how IRC works, but the whole system will function with many or no supplementary servers connected
2) P2P based routing: Each client will attempt to connect to one another, A connects to B and B to A and so on until as many connections as are possible are formed. Each client will then ping its connections and the server will record all of the ping averages, and calculate a minimum spanning tree for routing based on them, taking into account which clients can not connect to each other, and it will form a routing model that will be used for the rest of the game
3) In the event that no one can connect to each other, (which may occur frequently for small games), then the server will perform the routing using the system I have already created.