[GD-General] physics and networking

[Corrinne Y. <cor...@el...>]

I have a few questions for all of you. I would be grateful to hear from
all your varied experience.

Which physics structures do you always server broadcast and arbitrate?

Which physics structures do you occasionally broadcast?

Which physics structures do you client predict most of the time, and
server arbitrate occasionally?

Which physics structures do you only client predict and never worry
about synchronizing?

What about trying to do it in a peer to peer model instead of a full
roundtrip of server client? Which physics structures do you think can
get away with in peer to peer?

Do you think an entire "simple death match" MP game can get away with it
being peer to peer?

What kind of things must you always arbitrate by a server? Can one
"design" the game play out of any necessary server arbitration?

It would save a lot of data structure bookkeeping if each client can
become more powerful (and the server to arbitrate almost nothing, or
just not exist at all).

The bookkeeping isn't bad for simple player position, rotation, etc. But
chains of complex physics reaction becomes quite a pain of the neck to
be maintained and received from a "remote" arbitrator all the time. :(
It easily "doubles" the code to type to have the server minds itself
with so many complex collisions arbitrations. :(