Is Dynamic server mesh easily achievable in terms of implementation time, compared with static mesh? Are you confident that this one will come quickly?
TL;DRDynamic meshing needs less development than static meshing, which already covered the core technology; the developer hopes it comes quickly, with some dynamic elements already in 4.0, and doesn't expect multi-month development.
Of course, static server meshing included ALL the technology development. So the low-level code that deals with the network: transmission of packets that are reliable vs. those that are unreliable, all this technology has been rewritten for server meshing. Then the concept of authority, where we're in the process of ironing out all the bugs linked to the transfer of authority, i.e. when you change servers, all the game components must respond to this change of authority.
There are a lot of elements that were badly done at the time, or done unnecessarily, that need to be dealt with. And we're dealing with that right now.
To continue on the subject of server meshing, we're talking about massive transfers of authority. Let's take a large Microtech mesh in its entirety, and decide to bring in a server to look after New Babagge alone. So here we're doing mass transfers of authority that will bring all the transfers to the new server, part of the dynamic meshing development, plus the reconciliation loop that will look at where the players are, where there's a need for servers, and which will distribute the server needs to best serve the players.
That means not only grouping them together, because there's a cost dimension involved. Of course, if we could give each player a server, we'd do it haha!
To sum up, there's less development to be done with dynamic than with static. I hope we'll be able to do this quickly, but already in 4.0 there are certain elements of dynamic meshing that are implemented in the code. That means the ability to switch servers on and off depending on whether there are players or not.
We're trying to make sure we have this same flexibility in 4.0 (internally we call it "almost-dynamic" for a lack of better words haha). But here we are, trying to bring you as much of the dynamic mode as possible in the PU version. But we don't think we're heading into a multi-month development for dynamic, we're on the right track at the moment.