Re: [Algorithms] High-Speed Flat File System

[Mick W. <mi...@mi...>]

On 2/14/07, John Ratcliff <jra...@in...> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> However, today, I am working with an MMO game engine that has constantly
> changing game assets.  This isn't a 'problem' this is by design.  The
> entire
> game environment can change on a continuing basis.  This greatly enhances
> the play experience since there is always new content to be found.
> [...]
> In this way allocating a space for a new file is pretty much the same as
> allocating memory normally.  If there is no spot for it, you can either
> grow
> the file or throw away the oldest or least used file out (presuming you
> have
> a backend way to get the data back if needed.)  Since garbage collection
> on
> a flat file is out of the question, [...]
>

Is it really out of the question?  Sure, you'd potentially have to move
hundreds of megabytes to fill a hole, but essentially what you are doing is
defragmenting, which you can do as a low-priority background task.
Frequently changed assets will bubble to the end of the file system,  so
repeated changes won't take so long.  You could also probably allow quite a
significant amount of fragmentation (say 10%) which would speed everything
up a lot.

Mick.