[Arianne-general] Need help with protocol

[Tom P. <to...@ts...>]

Could anyone provide details on the protocol? I think there is something I'm
missing.

From all the documentation and code I have gone through, this is what I
understand:

A message consists of:
Type (8 bits)
SubType (8 bits)
Length (8 bits)
Data (length determined by Length parameter above)

The GeneralMessage class is extended by specialized messages, but in the end
a transmitted message consists of the above converted into AVector type and
sent through the TCP connection. (I see that AVector can grow to fit more
data, but it's not clear why the messages aren't just put into a single
chunk of memory malloc'ed for the message. For example, *char type. Is it
because the same messages are reused, thus avoiding repeated mallocs and
frees? If so, why not define a maximum message length, malloc an appropriate
chunk, and eliminate the C++ class overhead?)

Two possible types are ARIANNE_ADMIN (0x00) and ARIANNE_GAME (0x03).
Two possible ARIANNE_ADMIN subtypes are LOGIN (0x00) and LOGOUT (0x01).
Two possible ARIANNE_GAME subtypes are ARIANNE_ACTION (0x00) and
ARIANNE_PERCEPTION (0x01).
(I found these in defines.h.)

I cannot find any sort of state diagram for the protocol, however. Sniffing
traffic sent by the client I find the following data sent from the client to
the server:
0x00 0x00 0x01 0x00
0x00 0x00 0x2B 0x00 0x29
"Arianne 1.0.0 ALPHA 1 -- Release Pandora" 0x00

Could someone explain what is going on with this transmission? 0x29 is the
length of the null-terminated client identification string, but the other
data don't make sense when applying the above message format. (I saw
discussion of priorities and message identifiers. Are these now present in
the protocol?) Also, could someone explain the data carried by different
messages, and provide some sort of state diagram? (For example, C2S_LOGIN is
followed by which possible S2C messages?)

Thanks,
Tom