Loaths of questions about mmf2

[NeoMonkey]

Hi! Well I'm planning making mmorpg game and I have few questions how is best way to do and few things about mmf2 itself.

1.Sub-apps
Well I think I know the answer for this, bu I'll still ask. If you have 4 sub-application in game. They all have 300 objects, so would the game slowdown as there would be 1200 objects in one window, or would it will be like there would be 300 objects in one window?

2.Library vs not library
It seems you can use mmf2's .mfa files as library files. Now the question is is it better to use library to load stuff? If I don't use librarys, I'll have to add all 5000+ objects into all 4 sub-applications. They are destroyed and I use load on call, but does it slow down the game, even if there are about 200 object, but they have been loaded from memory? That is why I have been thinking about .mfa file as library. I'm not sure if it goes like this, but it could go like when loading from library, it loads the data, and when deleted, main app destroys it also from memory, so it doesn't matter if objects are loaded.

3.Map loading
Ok here's 2 ways of going to do this and I am not sure which is better. First way is to create file into server. Now when player goes into map he send message "load_map|(map_number)". Now then server opens the map file and sends line data from the file like: "ab|cc|ka|cp|...|mj" Now when this message comes the client system loads tiles and starts making bacdrops out of them. And the file is loaded. This way I could edit the maps as server side, so there isn't so many updates needed.

The other way is to create big pictures of maps, and just adding all enemies from some .ini within exe. This mayby is faster, but when greating new maps, you have to edit the client. So which one is better?

4.Updater
Is there a possibility to edit the client.exe, by adding stuff in it within binary data. Like you load new map file with updater. Now I don't want anyone to see it, so I want to add it on data elements, so is this possible to make. Basicly you need to update old files within exe and adding new map files, so the player would automatically go into new map.

If you guys would help me with these info would be great.

[DJFuego]

1.Sub-apps= 1200 objects is still 1200 objects You will still need to keep track of them.

2.Use the pre-load objects bit on MMF2

3.So it's fully on line then. You could Have the maps client side and MD5 check the file to save the download. Saves the bandwidth on your server too.

4.If you have a MD5 hash file of all the maps then you can make sure all the maps are right. If the MD5 has is different on the client than it is on the server then download the map.

[NeoMonkey]

Thanks for answers, allthought I'm having problems, because I don't know what md5 is?

[Asholay]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

[NeoMonkey]

Umm, what? If I understood correctly I need to change the data into MD5 crypts. But how can I change them into that, anyone could make somekind of generator, because I don't understand anything about it!

[Random]

Hm. You could save your levels with the binary extension to encrypted binary files on disk. These files can then be sent to the client by the server as a binary stream or the client could download them from a web address.
Advantage: they'll be able to contain all the level data and also the info about enemies, etc., while the user can not edit them (encrypted).

[NeoMonkey]

mMm... I need to check how the binary extension works. Basicly all I want is to have within exe files, which can be reupdated into the source. Mayby making guild wars styled update mechanism, would be great.

[Random]

Well you can't update data into the exe - you can only replace the exe with a new one (which is not a smart way to ship updates).

I'm sure Guild Wars uses external files too, for updates.

[NeoMonkey]

Ahh, well the guild wars has 3.79gt sized of .dat file, so I'm not sure how it does update that. Well the problem of the external files are the security. The encrypted binaries are one way to do it. But allthough almost all data are within the server, so I'm not sure does it have to be horribly secured.

[Nifflas]

Why would external files be less secure? Just use an encryption that's strong enough.

.exe's are files too, they don't magically become some kind of super encrypted files that data can't be extracted out of.