/*
Minetest-c55
Copyright (C) 2010-2011 celeron55, Perttu Ahola <celeron55@gmail.com>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
*/
/*
=============================== NOTES ==============================
NOTE: Things starting with TODO are sometimes only suggestions.
NOTE: iostream.imbue(std::locale("C")) is very slow
NOTE: Global locale is now set at initialization
NOTE: If VBO (EHM_STATIC) is used, remember to explicitly free the
hardware buffer (it is not freed automatically)
Old, wild and random suggestions that probably won't be done:
-------------------------------------------------------------
SUGG: If player is on ground, mainly fetch ground-level blocks
SUGG: Expose Connection's seqnums and ACKs to server and client.
- This enables saving many packets and making a faster connection
- This also enables server to check if client has received the
most recent block sent, for example.
SUGG: Add a sane bandwidth throttling system to Connection
SUGG: More fine-grained control of client's dumping of blocks from
memory
- ...What does this mean in the first place?
SUGG: A map editing mode (similar to dedicated server mode)
SUGG: Transfer more blocks in a single packet
SUGG: A blockdata combiner class, to which blocks are added and at
destruction it sends all the stuff in as few packets as possible.
SUGG: Make a PACKET_COMBINED which contains many subpackets. Utilize
it by sending more stuff in a single packet.
- Add a packet queue to RemoteClient, from which packets will be
combined with object data packets
- This is not exactly trivial: the object data packets are
sometimes very big by themselves
- This might not give much network performance gain though.
SUGG: Precalculate lighting translation table at runtime (at startup)
- This is not doable because it is currently hand-made and not
based on some mathematical function.
- Note: This has been changing lately
SUGG: A version number to blocks, which increments when the block is
modified (node add/remove, water update, lighting update)
- This can then be used to make sure the most recent version of
a block has been sent to client, for example
SUGG: Make the amount of blocks sending to client and the total
amount of blocks dynamically limited. Transferring blocks is the
main network eater of this system, so it is the one that has
to be throttled so that RTTs stay low.
SUGG: Meshes of blocks could be split into 6 meshes facing into
different directions and then only those drawn that need to be
SUGG: Calculate lighting per vertex to get a lighting effect like in
bartwe's game
SUGG: Background music based on cellular automata?
http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata
SUGG: Simple light color information to air
SUGG: Server-side objects could be moved based on nodes to enable very
lightweight operation and simple AI
- Not practical; client would still need to show smooth movement.
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