Re: A few thoughts on client/server in multi-player games

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho>]

+--- Eric Anderson:
| [suggestion to use a hybrid]

I _am_ partial to optimising the heck out of common operations like
monster updates, but how much do we gain? Let's say that on a 15x15
board (11x11), a quarter of the squares change. That's 168 bytes (90)
with your binary protocol. How big is an IP fragment?  (I'd love to
know!)

+---
| We are currently trying to do ~10 updates a second.  Lowering this
| number to 4 would substantially reduce the bandwidth needed.

Ugh. Yes, but I wouldn't want to play it at 4 fps. With the current
state of the Internet, playing across the Atlantic is not
possible. Aim for WAN's (ping round-trip < 100ms). For me, this means
all of Scandinavia, I think that is acceptable.

+---
| If you only need a two digit number, send it as a byte, not a 32-bit
| number.

But then you have locked yourself to a range. ASCII protocols' main
virtue is easy extensibility.

+---
| Moreover, commands like TMI aren't particularily good because they
| don't really tell you what the command is trying to do, which was
| the whole point of trying to have ascii commands.

It was meant to stand for "Transfer Multiple Images" - I (obviously)
think it is mnemonic, better than "7" in any case :-)


Kjetil T.