Development:Network:Todo

Bugs for deathmatch

• Sometimes, player 1 doesn't see player 2 after player 2 logs in. (however it receives the enterrequest, and prints out "Now 1 clients in system"
• Missiles dying not broadcasted (untested fix).
• With renamed units (renamed aeon in both test2 savegame files, Player 2 seems to load fine, but cannot fire guns.
• missile starts wobbling into the same place (doesn't seem to receive updates?)
• server crashes if player unit dies (GetUnit() is often dereferenced without checking for NULL)

Network TODO

• Clean up server-client-authserver communication
  • I would really like if the messages sent and received could be done in a more uniform way.
  • Clean up some unused messages.
• Login:
  • Encrypted authentication, possibly using a random server token.
    • This means that login data cannot be the first packet sent -- it must first negotiate a key.
  • Would SSL be a good idea here. I think we currently link with a Crypto++ library... but I'm not sure how it is currently used or how to use it.
  • Make sure authserver-server-client time synchronization works correctly. Maybe every few minutes (or even hours) A,S,C should sync in case a clock gets off somehow.
• Exiting:
  • VSExit(1) is somewhat brutal way of quitting the game. It often doesn't even nicely inform the server until it closes the connection.
  • Games should be saved? (see below)
    • How much data should actually be saved? What if you have died?
• Damage:
  • Theoretically implented, but I have yet to see collisions and weapons actually do damage client-side.
  • Figure out how to gracefully detect dead units (Crashing because the unit is NULL is not the right way to do this).
  • Not sure what CMD_SCAN is to be used for... it's used in one place -- that is in NetClient::scanRequest.
  • I don't know yet how the game will implement dying...
    • It would be bad to have to start from scratch every time you crash into something.
    • Have the respawn key re-join?
    • How do we implement saving? Respawn doesn't work without a way to save... or should you keep everything the same as when you died, and then start from a random "spawn point".
      • I believe most FPS games make you lose all upgrades, but this is not an option in Vega Strike, or things will get boring quickly.
      • How do games like Ultima or WoW behave when you die? Do you lose everything (obviously you can't lose all your experience)?
        • Diablo II: A dead body is left at the place where you died. With it are all your equipment, upgrades and the gold (credits) you carried. Your team members can recover all that for you or you can hurry there yourself. Some of the gold is alsways lost however. In more difficult settings (hell and nightmare) also some of your experience is lost. (Zeog 01:24, 4 July 2006 (PDT))
• Weapons:
  • Energy needs to recharge client-side (interpolate between CMD_SNAPSHOTs) -- this is one (if(Network==NULL))'ed out statement in some updatePhysics-related function in unit_generic.cpp -- Really easy to fix.
  • Clients with NULL targets constantly send out streams of CMD_TARGET to the server (from withing FireKeyboard::ForceTarget. We sohuld either disable it client-side (but then people will have to manually re-target when their target dies), or else have the server instead check for any nearby targets, and then broadcast a CMD_TARGET only once it becomes non-NULL. This way we avoid the flooding.
• Jumping, Docking, multiple systems:
  • Server switching???
  • Having the server load a new system may not be a good idea. The server should always have all systems it will handle running at once.
  • This also means that the universe must be limited.