Download with each join

[Stoney]

I have a question about the inner workings of the file downloads. Each time a player joins our server they get a download of roughly 300kb. This number appears to change a bit also. I want to know what this download is. I was under the impression that client side scripts and maps are the only things that need to be downloaded from the server and that they where cached on the client side. Why is it then that there still is a 300kb download each time you join?

Our server is hosted on debian although I don't think this is exclusively a linux issue.

Any help or information is appreciated as this is eating our bandwidth.

[robhol]

Map data. There isn't really any way to get rid of this, short of turning off your .map data.

[Stoney]

Aren't .map files just like client side resources? There must be a way to cache maps in the same way.

[Dark Dragon]

map files are not being saved for the creators sake. they probably don't want everyone to have access to their work.

[Stoney]

Ah, that explains it. Seems the same could be said about client side scripts. I would have preferred a choice perhaps. But I'm sure we can script our way around it, thanks for the information.

[robhol]

On another note, it's kinda odd that the same concern is not shown scripters. There should at least be some rudimentary way of protecting scripts that can't be circumvented by a simple google search.

[Stoney]

be some rudimentary way of protecting scripts that can't be circumvented by a simple google search.

Yeah.

What about objects made with createObject calls on the server side? How do those objects get sent to the player, are they loaded on join or are they lazily loaded when needed? If they are loaded on join I guess we'll just implement client side cache for our maps.

[robhol]

Performance-wise, that'd be a step down, I think. I seem to remember map files being a more efficient way, if they're not the same. Either way, the elements need to be sent to the client one way or another, so it won't eliminate or even help the issue.

[dzek (varez)]

hmm, i think if you create like 1000 objects serverside, the server will send new data to client, but it wont show the loading thing. i must check it. my maps are about 1MB now, and i want a lot more objects.

@topic creator: i have posted the same problem some days ago in Scripting (AFAIR)