Elysian Shadows

I've written a simple 3D engine that lets me animate a model and move inside buildings/on terrain.

I've written a simple world server that uses I/O Completion Ports and handles authentication - and game state.

I want to know what the best way to deal with tracking player position is? Should I be doing Matrix Transforms on the server side ?

I appreciate any advice,
Thanks,
John

I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea about your problem but I figured I'd welcome you to the forums anyways. Nice to see yet another great programmer around here.

Aliuar2 wrote:I've written a simple 3D engine that lets me animate a model and move inside buildings/on terrain.

I've written a simple world server that uses I/O Completion Ports and handles authentication - and game state.

I want to know what the best way to deal with tracking player position is? Should I be doing Matrix Transforms on the server side ?

I appreciate any advice,
Thanks,
John

What do you mean by "server-side"? Are you implying that this is a network game or something...
Create a class that holds the player with Position as a property so you can track it that way, and update it all in the class as well...

I cannot say much else, I don't know much of anything about your project.

LeonBlade wrote:

Aliuar2 wrote:I've written a simple 3D engine that lets me animate a model and move inside buildings/on terrain.

I've written a simple world server that uses I/O Completion Ports and handles authentication - and game state.

I want to know what the best way to deal with tracking player position is? Should I be doing Matrix Transforms on the server side ?

I appreciate any advice,
Thanks,
John

What do you mean by "server-side"? Are you implying that this is a network game or something...
Create a class that holds the player with Position as a property so you can track it that way, and update it all in the class as well...

I cannot say much else, I don't know much of anything about your project.

Or server and client programming!

Sorry for the probably basic thing here, but the 'old' way to do it is to send velocity vectors, IIRC. So like, you might have like a .05 second resolution and you'd send

"Player 4 moved at 30 degrees for .05 seconds" at which point you'd resolve the position (factoring in gravity and acceleration and whatever) on the server side. Send them to the client the same way. Edit: And make the client apply gravity and accel and stuff.

Is that what you mean?

I'm pretty sure that LeonBlade offered the most useless advice that I have ever seen. XD

I honestly can't say that I have done much other than basic networking/server interaction. I wouldn't be able to offer anything other than probably what Marauder said.

GyroVorbis wrote:I honestly can't say that I have done much other than basic networking/server interaction. I wouldn't be able to offer anything other than probably what Marauder said.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. And friend and I tried to make an MMO (and didn't get far), but I focused on the engine while my friend worked on the network layer.

It worked, but probably didn't implement the best / most efficient practices.

I can do telnet-like things but I have no experience sending large amounts of data to large amounts of players, sorry. I could get away with sending packets of text with what I was doing. If you haven't, you might check out Beej's Guide to Network Programming (there's a link in our guides & resources thread), but I'm not sure how much help it'd be. Sorry we haven't been of much assistance. Also, whatever solution you come up with, please share so the rest of us can learn :D

The XNA Creator's Club has a sample project on Network Prediction with a 2 player tank game.

The code is going to be in C#, obviously, but it might give you some ideas.

For the record, I haven't downloaded the project, but I saw it and thought it might help.

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/networkprediction

GyroVorbis wrote:I'm pretty sure that LeonBlade offered the most useless advice that I have ever seen. XD

I honestly can't say that I have done much other than basic networking/server interaction. I wouldn't be able to offer anything other than probably what Marauder said.

Well he didn't say network game so I thought he said client/server for something else and I was like "WTF" but yeah... lol
My help was the best and you know it... >.>

LeonBlade wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote:I'm pretty sure that LeonBlade offered the most useless advice that I have ever seen. XD

I honestly can't say that I have done much other than basic networking/server interaction. I wouldn't be able to offer anything other than probably what Marauder said.

Well he didn't say network game so I thought he said client/server for something else and I was like "WTF" but yeah... lol
My help was the best and you know it... >.>

You basically said "have a player class." That would be a "no shit" if he were making an offline game, an online game, a text based game, a game for his mom, or a game to get his girlfriend to do anal. That would be a no shit in any programming language that allows basic OO.

GyroVorbis wrote:a game to get his girlfriend to do anal.

!!

You will find me this game, yes?

Some articles from Gamasutra that should be pretty relevant:
Internet Game Design
1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond
Instant Replay: Building a Game Engine with Reproducible Behavior

GyroVorbis wrote:

LeonBlade wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote:I'm pretty sure that LeonBlade offered the most useless advice that I have ever seen. XD

I honestly can't say that I have done much other than basic networking/server interaction. I wouldn't be able to offer anything other than probably what Marauder said.

Well he didn't say network game so I thought he said client/server for something else and I was like "WTF" but yeah... lol
My help was the best and you know it... >.>

You basically said "have a player class." That would be a "no shit" if he were making an offline game, an online game, a text based game, a game for his mom, or a game to get his girlfriend to do anal. That would be a no shit in any programming language that allows basic OO.

LOL leave me alone
Besides... I thought you hated OO...
And I didn't know if he knew OO or not so that's why I said that.

You guys have been really great, I'll work on the suggestions you mentioned and check out the articles.

I'll post full source code in a couple of weeks when I've refined things.

I really want this code to be a toolset for anyone who wants to make their own MMO, but I want to make it scalable and secure, so I will most likely do a ton of rewrites.

John