Re: TCP vs UDP

["Carl Edman" <cedman@cedman.remote.Princeton.EDU>]

Philip Brown <philb@soda.berkeley.edu> writes:
> You're neglecting my other proposal, which is that "updates" as far
> as mapping goes, use absolute coordinates, and tell client what
> "center" is reguarded as.

Lest there be any misunderstanding on this point, let me make clear  
that I think that this is an awful idea.  Why would you want to do such  
a display centric thing ?  Just to make clients which want to  
automatically draw maps (in the traditional sense of the word) for the  
player harder to write.

Also, this makes the packet ordering problem worse.  If you tell the  
client what the absolute position of the player is and what the  
absolute position of some piece of mapping information is, it doesn't  
matter in what order they come.  However, if you insist on sending all  
mapping data relative to the player, a simple reversal of order will  
completely screw up your display.

Finally (and only peripherally related) I don't think that the client  
should always be required to have the player at the center of the  
screen.  Instead clients may want to move the screen in such a manner  
that the maximum number of mapped squares is visible.  That would mean  
that for example a player walking into a corner of the map would end up  
in the corner of the viewport.  Why waste 3/4s of the screen real  
estate ?  Of course, if clients want to do that they should be free to.

	Carl Edman