Re: Shared game-data

mAsterdam wrote:
> Alvin Ryder wrote:
> > mAsterdam wrote:
> [snip]
> >>
> >>ISTM a multi-player game is a good metaphor for business sytems.
> >
> > I see what you mean the metaphor has some appeal but ...
> >
> > In business systems it is desirable to normalize the data, lets just
> > discuss first normal form, all attributes are atomic.
> >
> > OTOH game objects contain some atomic types but they also contain
> > pointers, other objects, trees, collections ... which is all very
> > non-atomic and very non-normalized.
> >
> > The internals of a game are more like the internals of a wordprocessor
> > or spreadsheet.
> >
> >>Could you please tell how good gaming software organizes the
> >>sharing of data between players?
> >
> > Multiplayer games are typically implemented using a client/server or
> > peer to peer architecture. Only a relatively small amount of game state
> > needs to be broadcast and shared because each player runs their own
> > instance of the game, all the static game assets are duplicated.
>
> Would you agree that this scheme wouldn't work for massively
> multiplayer games?
>

Yes, I reckon you're right, that's what I've heard. Games programming and ai are both humungous fields and I'm only familiar with Quake style multiplayer architectures, they are multiplayer but not massively so. When I get time I plan to dig deeper into the massive stuff, "what makes them tick ..."

Cheers ;-) Received on Sun Apr 30 2006 - 07:53:15 CEST