P0-B5: Part 1246: Debugging, Improvements
by PhoenixGames on May.07, 2023, under Astral Realms, Meridian, P-0, P0_B5, Software and Games, Spiritus Astrum
The next step is to make the Space-Based AI network safe.
Currently, when enemy or NPC starships are spawned, their positions are not synced across the network.
This will be more complex than the other AI types, since the Space-Based AI needs to have persistence (It needs to be able to follow the player between star systems, and it needs to remain in the world when the player logs out).
For the time being, I can simply have the AI spawned, and controlled, by a single client, and then synced over the network.
When this client logs out, I can then switch control to another client in the same zone, and when that client logs out, I can set the AI to persistence mode, where it will simply wait for another player to enter that zone.
This is not ideal, but I need to balance the goal of keeping most processing on the client (To keep server load light) and the goal of creating a persistent world (Which will require the server to have knowledge of the client world state).
I am in the process of testing and evaluation various options, and the above solution seems to work reasonably well so far, even if it is a little unusual.
