Dynamic download of files

[MaddDogg]

Hi!

I hope that there is none other topic requesting this and I don't spam here

I recently thought of the idea, if it would be possible to change the file downloading management in a way so that files could be still loaded after the joining of a player.

In the meta.xml, files would get an extra attribute, for example "auto-download", which would prevent a file to be downloaded automatically at join of a player. But because the file is mentioned in the meta.xml, the server still knows that it is there and it can be post-loaded when needed.

A more practical example would be this:

A player with only a very small bandwith connects to a server, which uses a lot of files, let's say a total of 50MB data to download.

99% of this data is not loaded automatically, when he joins, but the player is rather asked, if he wishes to have some "extra features", which are only available by downloading 49MB of data.

So, he can choose, whether he wants to download this or not.

To check, if certain files are downloaded, a function like "isFileAvailable" or "isFileDownloaded" would be needed to check, whether the optional data can be used.

I know that this is a quite big request and maybe it is already requested, but I just try my luck with this request

[Callum]

I'd rather download everything on join rather than constant smaller downloads throughout my play on the server. And if a client-side script needed to call an export in another client-side script which has not yet been downloaded, well, there will be quite a few errors.

[eAi]

We've discussed this kind of thing before, but nobody has really been satisfied with any of the possible ways we thought of implementing it.

Adding a system like you describe would be useful, but my feeling is that it adds too much of a burden on scripters to be that useful. They go from having a script that works pretty reliably to having to cope with lots of random edge cases. What if they want to do this with vehicles - surely everyone needs that vehicle downloaded? If not, how do other people see the vehicle?

In the end, although the downloading is annoying and time consuming, it's certainly simpler for everyone.

[Dark Dragon]

the best way i can think off would be the possibility to start resources (at least the client side scripts) for specific players only. but as eai said, i'm not even satisfied with this idea myself.

[DiSaMe]

I think we need client-side file functions (fileOpen, fileWrite, etc.). If they were implemented, scripters could script this way of downloading files in their servers if they wanted.