Objects Ghosting only to certain clients

#1 In packUpdate() you can conditionally change what you send out depending on the relationship between the destination client and the object being ghosted.

eg
instead of this:

stream->writeFlag(object->isHidden());

do something like this:

stream->writeFlag(object->isHiddenForThisClient(netConnection aka client);

edit: of course, client-side cheats are still possible with something as simple as an isHidden() flag, but maybe that's something you could deal with when it becomes a problem for your app.

#2 Great idea, thanks!

#3 This seems like a good approach, and as I was coding the packUpdate routine, I realized that this (packUpdate) only gets done once, on the server, and then ghosted to the clients.

So changing it here still changes it for everyone, not specific clients.

Maybe it's the unpack update that I need to change...

Am I correct?

#4 WARNING: UNTESTED IDEA

Could you modify the scoping query for clients in 'SceneGraph::scopeScene'?

#5 Hiya -

actually, packUpdate() is called once per object being ghosted per client being ghosted to,
not once per object being ghosted.

that is, if you're ghosting an object out to seven clients, its packUpdate() is called seven times, with a different client each time.


take for example the case where players are hidden from people on different teams.
in that case, the general player object could implement "isHiddenForThisClient()" like this:

bool Player::isHiddenForThisClient(NetConnection* nc)
{
   GameConnection* gc = dynamic_cast<GameConnection*>(nc);
   if (gc == NULL)
      // error!

   Player* otherPlayer = gc->getPlayerObject();
   if (otherPlayer == NULL)
      // error!

   bool sameTeam = (otherPlayer->getTeam() == this->getTeam());

   return !sameTeam;
}

.. i'm not sure if GameConnection::getPlayerObject() is part of stock TGE or not, it may be something we added.

i'm pretty sure this technique should work.
i'm using it currently in a chat context to block certain lines of conversation from some players and not from others.

#6 Thanks for the education! I love to learn stuff like this :)