[CF-Devel] throw away xmbs? (yes please)

[Michael Toennies]

>
     
      On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 02:43:40PM +0100, Andreas Vogl wrote:
     
     >
     
      > On Mi, 1.11.00, Jan E. wrote:
     
     >
     
      > > I'm using xbms with caching turned off because this seems to be the
     
     >
     
      > > fastest setting when playing on a remote server over a slow link.
     
     >
     
      >
     
     >
     
      > I assume that you play only for code-testing, therefor this argument
     
     >
     
      > doesn´t seem fair to me. =)
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      I don't test code on remote servers.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      > On using xbms a player would miss a great part of the fun. I´ve played
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      Faster response from the server is more important to me than nice
     
     >
     
      graphics, but continueing the xbm support is not the right answer to
     
     >
     
      this problem.  The X11 client does a (superfluous) access() call and a
     
     >
     
      file open and read per face command.  This means that the first time
     
     >
     
      you see a Greater Daemon after the client was started, the client will
     
     >
     
      do 42 disk accesses.  Meeting a Greater Daemon is not exactly the right
     
     >
     
      time for some additional lag.  This does not happen when caching of
     
     >
     
      images is turned off, and a xbm image is not much larger than a face
     
     >
     
      command.  Furthermore, you don't ever get these '?' images without
     
     >
     
      caching.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      These problems could be avoided if the client would request all face
     
     >
     
      number -> face name mappings from the server when it is started.  It
     
     >
     
      could then load the faces from its local cache before playing begins.
     
     >
     
     
     
This is really what we need: a MAPFACES and GETFACES cmd.

The server simply do a list of the face of a map you enter the first time,
removes all face the player has got before and send them as a long data
string.

MAPFACES  len <face|name|face|name|face|...>

This should work very fancy, because you dont get the problem Jan described,
because you must
load a picture in the same moment your socket got hot and the server drop
out hundreds of
fighting datas.

Also, you do with one cmd was you do with many. One bigger hit, but you save
a many small bastards.

MichToen