Re: [glob2-devel] Revive Glob2 with a kickstarter

[Stéphane Magnenat]

> glob2 uses deterministic behavior that is expected to be simulated on all
> clients identically, reducing the amount of network traffic to the human
> actions. This approach certainly has its academic value but turned out to be
> fatal as it bound the game speed to the slowest client's speed and caused
> big syncing trouble when one client had connection issues. Also by its
> nature all clients had to know all game state and only because people plaid
> fair, the fog of war was not lifted above the enemy base, so yeah, consider
> the current network design as obsolete.
> 
> The only part that might not be obsolete is that games have to run off the
> meta/handshake server once the game starts, meaning that one of the clients
> should take the role of the server to be scalable. Alternatively servers
> should be dedicated machines like it is common in FPS servers, but the meta
> server should be able to handle many such servers dynamically.

In addition, the current network model for glob2 is a headache with respect to 
NAT traversal. We spent countless of hours in trying to make a network 
protocol able to traverse NAT. Although current NAT control protocol such as 
UPnP could help, I agree with Leo that glob2's network model is too much of a 
hurdle.

The question of an alternative network model is for me open.

have a nice day,

Stéphane

-- 
http://stephane.magnenat.net