Re: [isugamedev-devel] Re: Network Support

[Kevin M. <ke...@vr...>]

#1 is interesting...  I'm assuming you want to make a network input part
of the GameInput class..  I had planned the GameInput to be for devices
only, not gamestate.  I think for gamestate a separate project could be
made which is a simple dispatcher of events, unless you think game events
need to be built into the gamekernel?  

regarding a networked device in the GameInput class, it might make
sense if you wanted to remotely control a game with a device connected to
a remote machine (device server) (like if you wanted to have 2 computers
and one was your device server, and the other was your image generator)...
this would be especially cool if you planned to support some magnetic
tracker or other more complex input device that needed a fair amount of
signal processing before the data was usable...

I'd think this would be not needed by most games though, unless you had a
different idea?  maybe to support a location based entertainment type of
thing, or bring some VR style stuff to the home market?

#2 sounds like it would be a method of distributing objects.  these
objects would know how to serialize themselves over the wire and
reassemble on the other side...  this would be useful.  what would your
protocols be?  would it be peer to peer or server based?  UDP or TCP?
 If client/server based, would one game run the server, or would you run
the server in a separate process (without graphics)?  how scalable would
you make it, just 2 computers, or infinite connections?  what about
security concerns?  people generally think that you only get security with
a client/server based approach since there is a central authority.  I
think peer to peer sec is doable, but trickier maybe...

I'd say #2 sounds more promising, but should be implemented as a separate
project to be used generally by any application wanting to pass
lowlatency data - unless you can think of a need for it to be directly
coupled to the gamekernel?  I envision a general game event system that
could be generalized.  it would get its events from various subsystems
(pluggable) such as network, ai, and input.  (the input subsystem is
already implemented - GameInput).   This is just small speculation about
this event system.  maybe it should be a generic state machine instead?

anyway, I think the statemachine and the input and the network might be
able to be decoupled (at least the network and input could be - the state
machine might just be a listener for AI, network and input events provided
by the generic subsystems)..


just some thoughts, we can probably talk more about them later.. :)


@--@---@---@----@-----@------@------@-----@----@---@---@--@
Kevin Meinert                                  __  _   __  
http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~kevn         \  ||  \| \ /  ` 
Virtual Reality Applications Center        \ ||.-'|--\    
Howe Hall, Iowa State University, Ames Iowa \||  \|   \`__,
-----------------------------------------------------------

On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Johnathan G. wrote:

> I haven't decided yet how I want to do that.  I was considering doing two 
> things at the least.
> 
> 1)  Implement a networked input device so that an application could receive 
> input events for it's devices over the wire.  Obviously this would only be 
> useful for LAN applications and is not really feasible to use as a network 
> module.
> 
> 2)  Implement a hierarchy for network events.  In other words, their will be 
> an abstract base class for network events containing a bare minimum of 
> fields, and a set of frequently used events derived from the base network 
> event class.  Beyond that, users will need to implement their own types of 
> events for their specific application derived from the base network event 
> type.  How this will all behave is still on the drawing board (or in the air).
> 
> Let me know what you think.
> 
> Johnathan
> 
> On Saturday 09 February 2002 11:21, you wrote:
> > cool to see this commit!
> > i was also curious what you meant by network support...  how you planned
> > to implement, etc...
> >
> > @--@---@---@----@-----@------@------@-----@----@---@---@--@
> > Kevin Meinert                                  __  _   __
> > http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~kevn         \  ||  \| \ /  `
> > Virtual Reality Applications Center        \ ||.-'|--\
> > Howe Hall, Iowa State University, Ames Iowa \||  \|   \`__,
> > -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
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