Is dynamic server meshing easily reachable compared to static server meshing? He means in terms of time, since it took a while to get here: will it take as long again? So, are you confident it will arrive quickly? We're not asking when, but are you confident it will arrive quickly?asked by CommanderFran
TL;DRHe hopes dynamic meshing will come quickly since much of the groundwork is done with static and 4.0 already has quasi-dynamic features, and he doesn't expect multi-year development, without giving a date.
For sure, static server meshing included all the development of the technology behind it. The low-level code that handles the network, so all the network transmission, the packets, the transmission of packets that are 'reliable' versus 'unreliable'. So we have two types of updates. All of that technology was rewritten for server meshing. Then, the concept of authority. And right now we're fixing all the bugs related to authority transfer, that is, when you change server, all the game's components have to respond to that change of authority. There are a lot of them that didn't do the work properly, or where it wasn't necessary in their case. Now it has to be handled, so we're going through that. To get to the dynamic level, we're talking about authority transfer on a massive scale. I have a server simulating, say, let's take a big mesh, all of microTech, and then we decide to bring in a server to take care of New Babbage. At that point there are a lot of entities currently being simulated that have to be transferred. So we do 'mass transfers of authority' that will really carry the whole transfer over to the new server. That's part of the development for dynamic meshing. Plus the reconciliation loop, which will look at where players are, where we need to have servers to benefit players as much as possible. That is, not just grouping them, because there's also a cost aspect to it. For sure, if we could give every player their own server, we would. But at some point, you have to... But on that side, it means there's less development to do for dynamic than to get where we are now with static. I hope we'll be able to do it quickly. There are already some dynamic elements in the 4.0 build. That is, the ability to shut down servers where there's nobody, and to create servers where there are people. We're trying right now to make sure we have all that flexibility, even in 4.0. We kind of call it 'quasi-dynamic'. We're short on words, but we're trying to bring as many features of the dynamic mode as possible into the current version, and we don't think we're heading into a multi-year development for dynamic. We're on a good path right now.