Re: [simspark-devel] Physical and Graphic Layers, and agent-server Binary Protocol

[Mahdi <zig...@gm...>]

Hi Oliver and All

  The main point of porting the agent server protocol to binary format, is
to reduce the network data size, not by the size of the real data, but by
truncating the data type indicators, like eg. ax1, Ball, ... These texts
which come before the data values, and lots of spaces consumed within the
elements are the main size and space waste of the current string protocol
implementation. That was the reasonn at first place in several months ago,
me and other developers suggested to change the protocol, and as you
remember, Based on a simple analysis of a simple binary protocol, it was
revealed that such a protocol could even make the games can be run within an
ancient dial up network, which now we can't (although it is not my point to
use the simspark on dialup networks!, I am refering to huge size reducution)

Cheers
Mahdi

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:27 AM, Oliver Obst <oli...@cs...> wrote:

>
> On 09/02/2009, at 6:57 AM, Mahdi wrote:
>
> >   For the problem you mentioned about the binary size mismatch of
> > indormation in different cpu architectures, I did a bit of
> > searching, and found out that Microsoft dot net framework has
> > introduced some types like int32, int64 and like these, which gcc
> > yet does not support, or may not support at all. (Please correct me
> > if I am assuming wrong) So another way should be found around the
> > problem. Anybody got any idea?
>
> I don't think that introducing a binary protocol is a good idea, and
> should be avoided if possible.
> For the sensors we're using at the moment, a text based protocol is a
> good solution because it's human readable. A float always uses up 4
> bytes, and the text representation doesn't use much more (in some
> cases, it can use less). Plus you may introduce cross-platform issues
> that should be avoided. The work to implement and the hassle of using
> a binary protocol isn't worth the relatively small gain in efficiency.
>
> There are two cases where it may be necessary: For camera data and
> player integration. So I'd like to suggest to think about a mixed
> protocol instead of pure binary. S-Expressions (the syntax for the
> protocol we're using now) support binary data, or another solution
> would be a binary protocol combined with the S-Exp for the existing
> sensors / actuators.
>
> just my AU$0.02
>
> cheers
> Oliver
>
>
>
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