Mana Shield orb display bug?

[Yogi_Baar]

D1 is "synchronized" peer to peer, not client/server.

You don't actually mean that D1's synchronization is poorly implemented, do you? ;)

It might seem like a dumb idea to me at first, but I think I can understand Blizzard's intention here. Reducing the load on their servers is always a good thing. Plus, if players get pissed off by regularly dropping out of games, it isn't Blizzard's problem, it's the players' own crappy connection that's to blame. Smart.

In a server/dumb-client model, it might be reasonable to say that everything is about messages. For peer2peer and smart client models, however, the deterministic processing tends to be key...

Each peer must therefore ALWAYS keep its peers in PERFECT sync for peer-to-peer architecture to work as it's intended. And it seems to me that Blizzard didn't quite get at least one of the two upper-case words.

That is, I can say "turn off the light when you leave" and because you're a "smart" client, I can rest assured that you will do so at the appropriate time. So, later, when I know you've left, I get to assume the light is indeed off.

Could it also be:

• I say to everyone "hey guys, I just touched a magic shrine, display a golden orb above my head until I tell you to remove it"<>
  
• I think to myself "hm, looks like I can't actually have mana shield, oh well" but I don't notify my peers (thus screwing up the ALWAYS part in the previous paragraph)<>
  
• My peers happily display the orb above my head at all times (except in town where it just can't be displayed)<>
  [st]This is what I originally thought and would IMHO fit in quite well with the client/server, but peer-to-peer... I think it just shouldn't happen. Must be something else then.
  
  By the way, do you happen to know how synchronization is done in D1? Are the clients (I dare not call them smart) just sending out sync messages like "I moved to tile (13, 20)", "I hit monster 42 for 20 dmg", etc.? Or are they at times (if so, which times) sending full game info to peers (as I imagine it to be when someone joins the game)? Knowing this would help me understand some quirks I've seen so far.