It’s very hard to find code design articles for games, don’t understand why.

I was starting to hit my head against the problem of too much inheritance where every type of game object was starting to need it’s own branch on the inheritance tree, MVC looks like just the pruning shears I need! ;o)

Okay, so you have player 1 and player 2 on their own home computers and the server. I was imagining that the server stores the state of the world, so let’s say that the server changes the map every day, so when player 1 logs on to play he sees whatever the map is for that day, and so would player 2.

Also, the server stores where player 1 and 2 parked their light bikes from the last time they played.

So, when player 1 opens up the program/webpage at home, he sees the world that the server is showing that day and where his bike was last parked. When player 2 opens up the program/webpage at home, he sees the world that the server is showing that day and where his bike was last parked, and both players now see each other’s bikes.

The way I see this playing out in code:
1) Player 1 opens up the program at home.
– A LocalGameModel is created that stores pointers to a LocalPlayerModel, a RemotePlayerModel, and a ViewPortModel.
– A LocalGameController is created that will begin the game loop.
– A LocalGameView is created that shows the looks of the GUI.
– A LocalGamePortView is created that shows what’s happening in the game, and is added to the LocalGameView
– A LocalPlayerView is created that shows the light bike. This is added to the LocalGamePortView
– A RemotePlayerView is created that shows the light bike of the remote player. This is added to the LocalGamePortView.

– A LocalPlayerController is created that receives key presses from the local player and updates the LocalPlayerModel.

2) The Game loop begins and the LocalGamePortView is updating dependant upon the LocalGamePortModel and this cascades down through it’s child views.

3) Player 1 presses the up button and the LocalPlayerModel is updated by a given amount so that the bike’s model is moved up.

4) This updated data is sent to the Server’s Model, which then announces an update.

5) Player 1′s View is updated because it hears the update and player 1′s bike is moved up.

6) Player 2′s View is updated because it hears the updand and player 1′s bike is moved up.

Now, problems I see.
1) Models are usually Singletons, so I begin seeing a problem if there would be more than 1 RemotePlayerModel as now they would overwrite each other.

2) Again with the Models as Singletons. In this scenario the server is holding pointers to the Models of both players, since players would be of the same type, they would cancel each other out.

3) There is of course the issue of keeping everything in perfect sync, which I will need re-reading of your post as well as further research into best methods.

I’m sure there are plenty more issues, I’m just trying to get my head wrapped around how this would work out.

Thanks again for the GREAT write-up!

Gery

For your questions my basic line of thinking is a sort of controller that records input and can work closely with the model to re-create game states based on that timeline. Almost like an instant replay of the last 5 to 10 seconds of play in case things get out of sync.

Thanks in advance Andy,
Gery