[ARCHIVE] SimAntics & World Development

Status
Not open for further replies.
francot514 said:
And where the house data will be stored, appart from server db, i mean like a blueprint or iff file???
Click to expand...
The blueprints have always been stored locally at Maxis\The Sims Online\TSOClient\housedata\blueprints. I have no idea how the jobs work under the hood. I only assume it creates a temporary session when the first Sim arrives or randomly puts in others into existing sessions to create more then one or more, based on experience. I'm not sure what you mean about the iff files, though, since you aready know how to access them with TSO Categorizer.
 
Last edited:
The lot buying process is turning out to be much more complicated than I thought.
Sending the housedata when logging in isn't, and is already done (minus a few Lines of code in the client.)
Asynchronous loading of lot/housedata is easy if I make the client spawn a packet for every hover, but that would introduce a slight lag.
Loading an entire zooming region, however, is much more intricate.
First I'm going to have to look at Rhys' city renderer and figure out how to store the tile information in memory (probably as a 2D array.) Then I'm going to have to supply that with some algorithm for picking out any given area of tiles.
I might also have to reconsider how to store the damn thing. Right now a house Table is connected to the player Table in the DB. If I want to store all lots in the DB (which would be slower but require less memory), I might want a separate lot Table and connect that to the house Table somehow. Then on startup the server would literally spam the DB with packets to create all the lots from map data.
 
Yeah, some way to batch request these would be more interesting. The original game did fetch thumbnails like you would expect it to from a web server though - they all loaded individually at different times, as if they were separate requests.
 
And lets suppose that house will be not stored in server, only locally, where it should be saved house data, into a blueprint file???
 
francot514 said:
And lets suppose that house will be not stored in server, only locally, where it should be saved house data, into a blueprint file???
Click to expand...
We need to store all objects' simantics states with user lots - otherwise objects like pets will lose all of their relationships, repair states, clean states etc. This makes using the blueprint format unreasonable; we need to use a format more like a TS1 savegame, but obviously because that has not been reverse engineered it'll be quicker to come up with our own format.

So, now routing is working locally, in the 4 way A* mode I mentioned we would do as a first step before optimisation. I also fixed a bug with SetToNext's object on same tile mode, which means that doors are actually reliable now (no more random stopping at doors, or instantly appearing at objects).
 
Im just testing something local: store the house data into blueprint file without simsantics states, edit the house, save and then reloaded it, to see local expected results, this will allow like a "NoNetwork" mode for users that just want to test...
 
francot514 said:
Im just testing something local: store the house data into blueprint file without simsantics states, edit the house, save and then reloaded it, to see local expected results, this will allow like a "NoNetwork" mode for users that just want to test...
Click to expand...
I'm not sure how that would be of any benefit, considering right now there is no way to place objects in PD apart from those that spawn other ones, such as the flood object.
 
Blayer98 said:
So, then how would things like Buy Mode work?
Click to expand...
The server most likely contains the object ID and coordinates. As for game play, when you go into buy or build, the game continues to run. After you select an object, it first appears under a white and gray silhouette, where only you can see it. Like in TS1, once you decide where you want it, you click it again, it conforms the purchase, and then it finally shows up for everyone else. Same is true for build mode.
 
aidancheddar said:
The server most likely contains the object ID and coordinates. As for game play, when you go into buy or build, the game continues to run. After you select an object, it first appears under a white and gray silhouette, where only you can see it. Like in TS1, once you decide where you want it, you click it again, it conforms the purchase, and then it finally shows up for everyone else. Same is true for build mode.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's how it works in TSO. :p
 
I meant there is no way to place objects in PD right now. Buy mode will spawn local "ghost" objects which don't affect collision or other objects, including the cursor objects and objects that haven't been placed yet.
 
Routing now works with optimisation and it's looking great - but I'm not going to release a video until I fix the mystery room route bug and interpolate sim rotation between waypoints.
 
Sometimes the room routing just gives up and exits true via neither of the usual return statements (might be exiting false? sim's routing never even ticks after that), causing the object to think that the sim is instantly in front of it.
 
Fixed it, it was a problem where it tried to switch the instruction pointer of a VMPathFinder frame (special kind of frame) and it "advanced" to a True/False result, ending the routing early. I'll post a video later tonight - it's looking really nice.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top