The difficulty of synching game entrance
#23
Pantalaimon,Apr 28 2006, 10:49 AM Wrote:I believe he's pointing out the potential for abuse, which unfortunately should probably be considered when takling about any potential fix.  Like dozer said, if someone could cleverly figure out a way to stop the packet from being sent to the server that says "okay, I'm loaded, make me mortal again" then one could potentially be invulnerable indefinitely.

Edit: Also, I think he's talking the solution where you simply add an ice-block type buff to your character, making him invulnerable but unable to act while you load, not your solution where the character does not appear in the game until you are fully loaded.
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The solution would be as Jarulf says, for the server to not finish inserting you into the world until the client is ready. If someone jams or delays the 'ready' client signal they will be sitting at the loading screen longer, is all. If someone sends the 'ready' signal too soon, they will be sitting around present (in all ways) but unable to act until the game finishes loading.

I think one dilemma Blizzard has here is that they want you to able to do things even if not all the textures are loaded, etc. For example, after jumping in I can run around an Orgimmar in which most entities are only shadow blobs on the ground, the mailbox doesn't exist, etc - for a little while until my computer finishes loading. This is actually slightly useful, because I can head to the mailbox or the auction house or do other things in the few seconds while my client gets updated (from the local hard disk and/or the server.)

So allowing the client to do things before the game is done loading seems to be a design decision.

And if you allow the clients to do things when the world is not done loading on the client, then you must also allow the world to affect the client at that time (else run the risk of abuse.)

We can add to that the difficulty of deciding when the world IS done loading. Maybe the client never knows when the world is done loading because that is not a well defined state. If I haven't loaded the textures for the Jade Ooze, should the client not send "ready" just because there *could be* Jade Oozes around? How about the Sulfuras textures -- there *could* be somebody around wielding Sulfuras. This isn't a show-stopper, but it's not a trivial question to resolve.

Much nicer code-wise to simply rely on dynamic on-demand loading, though that does have side-effects with regard to synchronization. I'm sure Blizzard also likes dynamic loading for crossing zones so that there isn't a loading-lag ...

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Messages In This Thread
The difficulty of synching game entrance - by lfd - 04-27-2006, 11:18 PM
The difficulty of synching game entrance - by TheWesson - 04-28-2006, 11:43 PM
The difficulty of synching game entrance - by lfd - 04-29-2006, 02:15 AM

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