sync was Re: cheating

["Eric A. Anderson" <>]

"Carl Edman" <> writes:
> > 3) Without synchronisation people will scream, so your bi-directional
> > pipe  doesn't buy you much. If you can make 3 moves while only one
> > screen update  occurs you are going to find yourself in big trouble,
> > usually when you can least handle it.
> 
> No, _with_ sync they will scream.  Or rather they will throw away the  
> protocol over slow lines in disgust when being killed the Nth time  
> because they were frozen.  There is absolutely nothing more frustrating  
> than being unable to act.  Only a bi-directional protocol will prevent  
> that (and use all of the limited available bandwidth instead of only  
> half of it like synchronized protocol).  
In practice, we have no idea which one it will be, but in practice, it
is the server that synchronizes to the clients, not the other way
around.  E.g. the server will send a "have you updated the last 10
frames" and the client will respond yes when they have.  Someone who
is too slow just gets saved out and terminated by the server.
Without sync, you have really big problems with events queuing up, and
commands not being executed in the state people think they will be
executed in.

> > (Despite flooding my mailbox Carl, you have generated a
> > valuable discussion on the client/server issues)
> 
> Thank you.  You see, I have to.  There are all these people saying all  
> these wrong things and somebody has to spread the TRUTH. :-)  I just  
> sometimes wish they'd beat up on each other instead of all of them on  
> me.
I think the TRUTH is a relative thing; I believe we all have our own
experiences which tell us how we think things should be done, and each
person just keeps espousing the beliefs that they have.
          -Eric 
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