Developers Information

This file is simply a collection of thoughts, useful pieces of information, etc.

Parallel Simulation

The game logic is supposed to be affected only by the following factors:

• the pseudo RNG (which is completely determined by the initial seed)

• the starting conditions

• the sequence of player commands sent to the Cmd_Queue

As long as the gameplay logic stays the same (no code changes / no changes to conf files), and the above factors remain the same, the outcome must be the same.

This property of the Widelands game logic is extremely important for two reasons:

• Multiplayer by parallel simulation:

  Every host keeps the complete state of the simulation in memory, and only player commands are exchanged to keep network traffic low. The properties above guarantuee that there is no desync.

• Replay recording

  By creating a savegame followed by a sequence of player commands, it is possible to create a replay (demo) recording of a game (similar to Age of Empires, for example)

Why std::set<SomePointer*> is a bad idea

Well, actually it’s only a bad idea in the game logic, here’s why.

std::set<Foo*> uses pointer comparisons to sort the set. Pointers aren’t system-independent (in fact, they might even differ from one run to the next on the same system). Therefore, this construct must not be used in the game logic. Similar constructs are affected as well. Basically, never use pointer arithmetics for decision-making.