[Opentnl-general] NetClassGroup Nightmare

[Tess S. <ma...@gm...>]

Oh my aching head.

Okay, now, suppose, for the moment, that I had some sort of complex
distributed server.  It was built using a small number of discrete
server applications that communicate amongst themselves, and some of
them communicate with the client.  We'll give some names to the server
apps:

Login
Bob
Joe
Sally

So, the client knows about numerous game objects, including Widgets
and Foodlesnorts.  Bob knows about Widgets and Joe knows about
Foodlesnorts, but neither knows about both.  Seeing as how these are
gameplay-related objects, they've been assigned to NetClassGroupGame.=20
But there's one little problem.  Since the client knows about both
Widgets and Foodlesnorts, its mEventClassCount for the
NetClassGroupGame doesn't match Bob's count or Joe's count.  Thus,
when the client attempts to connect to Bob, BobConnection's
readConnectAccept fails on isVersionBorderCount, because the counts
don't  match up.

Well, we could hijack NetClassGameMaster, and move the Foodlesnorts
into that, even though it feels horribly, horribly wrong.  However,
it's not an extensible solution to the problem.  The next time we run
into this problem (say, Sally knows about something Bob knows about,
but Joe doesn't), we're in the same pickle, and we're out of
NetClassGroups (Login uses Community).

So, what's the RIGHT solution to this problem?  Any clues?

Tess