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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Hi all,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>This is a fairly lengthy email, so I apologize in
advance.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I am relatively new to ENet. I have integrated it
in my game engine and have successfully written a game which is working
perfectly. It is one of those finger twitching action games where speed is of
the utmost importance and delay is the most evil thing in the world. The way I
do it is to keep sending the entire state for a player to the other party
unreliably. The other client then works out the events that "must" have occured
by looking at the differences between the last known state and the new one. This
is far from a perfect solution as it neither scales well nor provides for very
readable code. Here's a summary of how I'm handling things:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>The game is a shooter where you run a round on a 1d
grid firing rocks at your oponent's palace. When a rock hits a square on the
other side it'll quickly begin piercing its way through until that section
of the wall crumbles. During that time, the other player may use their hammer to
defend the section.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I wrote an internal layout description for myself
before I started coding, which I then followed to ensure proper handling of all
possible situations.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>---Start of Internal Description---</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>The way in which this game communicates over the
network is fairly simple. The two players have a direct connection established
between one another, and they send out their player state roughly 30 times a
second. This player state contains the current x position, the current throwing
position which is -1 if nothing is being thrown, and then a list of all the
squares on that player's side. For each square, two values are stored. The first
is the current resistance which is 20 on max, and 0 if the square is destroyed.
The second one is crumbling speed which is 0 if the square is not currently
crumbling, and a value in milliseconds otherwise. This value is used to measure
if two or more rocks have been thrown on the same square.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>When a new state is received from the remote
player, we have to analyse this information in order to determine what changes
that have occured and if we need to take any action.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>If a new x position is received, we simply move the
player's local variable to this square and play a footstep sound.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>If the new throwing position is different from our
old one, we can take a few actions depending on its value:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>1. If the new one is greater than -1 and the old
one is -1, the remote player threw a rock at us. we play the throwing sound in
the appropriate location, but take no other action.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>2. If the new one is -1 and the old one is greater
than -1, we can assume that the remote player hit us and start the crumbling
sequence for that square on our end. Naturally if our square is already
crumbled, the remote player will not get any hit notifications from us.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>3. If they both are greater than -1, we can assume
that the remote player hit us and so we activate that sequence as above. We can
also assume that the remote player made a new throwing attempt in another
location and that we didn't see the -1 state that came prior to it probably
because of lag, and so we play another throwing sound in the new
location.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>After this, we go on to scan the game board and do
the following for each square:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>If the new resistance is greater than the old one,
the remote player hammered and so we play that sound.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>If the new resistance is lower than the old one, we
can take four actions.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV><BR>1. If the new resistance is 0 and the old resistance is greater than 0,
the square just broke so we play the appropriate sound and forget about
it.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2. If the old crumbling speed is the same as the new one, this was a normal
crumbling step and so we play the appropriate sound.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>3. If the old crumbling speed is 0 and the new one is greater than 0, this
was a new hit so we react accordingly.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>4. If the old one is greater than the new one and the new one is greater
than 0, this was a new hit on the same square.<BR></FONT><FONT size=2
face=Arial>---End of Internal Description---</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I realize that this is a lot of very game specific
information, and that's exactly my point. This all seems like a very dirty hack
to me, and I was wondering if any of you can suggest a better and more scalable
way of doing this while still keeping latency to an absolute
minimum?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Thanks in advance for any help!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Kind regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Philip Bennefall</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>P.S. I should perhaps mention that this is a game
for the blind; entirely based on sound, which is why sounds are mentioned all
over the place rather than graphics.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>