Question about how T3D Pro enhancements like sqlite3 and libcurl support work with networking and web plugins

#1 As far as databases go, the general rule is that you want the server to store all game-critical data in a multiplayer game. If you allow clients to save their data locally and then upload this info to the server, you're basically inviting cheats/hacks, as people will edit their stored data offline.

You're probably more likely asking about how the data gets stored on the client once it's downloaded... in my experience, you don't want to actually read from the database everytime you bring up the inventory or look at your stats, as that would simply bog down the disk and DB. Generally you'll want to load this data on the server when a player logs into their character and store it in their Player Object for the duration of their play session, from which you can easily do network sync with the class's existing pack/unpack functions. You won't need the database code on the client, as your Torque Player object is holding all the client-side data itself. In most cases this is going to be a much better solution than actual making a copy of the DB on the client when you connect (seems like overkill for most applications).

The exception would be extremely massive datasets, an example of which would be the "bank" systems in many MMOs which can hold 100s of items. Preloading this info into the Player class would be a waste of memory, and this kind of data is best loaded as-needed. I'd still say you're goign to load it on the server into the Player and then stream it to the clients via Torque's netoworking, it's just the kind of data you only bother loading/sending when the player actually accesses this part of the game. If this dataset is truly massive, it might actually be worthwhile to temporarily save it in a local database simply so you don't have to redownload it or keep it in active memory. There's no cheating concern here, because your game logic should prevent players from using (for example) an item their client claims to have that they don't actually have on the server.

Whenever it's appropriate, the server can write data back to the database for long-term storage. When this happens is kind of a question of game design; you could write every change to inventory or stats, creating lots of mini-writes to the DB, or you could save the entire character state at intervals, or whenever the player D/C's or loses connection, creating a smaller number of larger write events.

The short version: Access your databases through the server, that way the players can't change anything in their stored data without it going through server-side game logic. Don't let clients connect directly to the server DB, have the Torque server handle getting this data to the clients through the existing networking code.

#2 Henry,

Thanks for the detailed reply. This gives me a good overview of how this could work in Torque 3d.

-Marc