Analytical Perspectives in Game Design
Persistence
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At the moment persistence does nor happen at all. I think that this is a bad thing, but until I write a server, then it really cannot happen.

A client would do the following things:

• keep a registry of currently playing players, and their IP numbers.
• allow writing of changes to the game world to allow persistence.
• keep a track of the changes to the game world to allow centralised control of synchronisation of clients data.

An alternative scenario, the games all run as applications on the player's PC. Then the first player effectively becomes the server. If the player wants to quite, either the server function is transferred, or the whole game quits. I prefer this scenario, it has lots of benefits on the portability side.

In fact, you could let the server run anywhere, on a web server, on a PC or any machine that can run java. The only problem is finding out who the other players are.

21/11/99

See also: [Role Playing Games] [Game Engine]
© 1998, 1999 Brian Yap. These pages are available under the GNU licence.