[bf1942] BF Conversion - Project AutoMap

[Andreas Fredriksson]

On 6/27/05, Atomm Nihilo - Gamers Radio <atomm at gamersradio.com> wrote:
> Andreas,
> 
>  This is part of the reason I wanted to post this to the list. From my
> experience, you can do anything you want with code, it's just a matter
> of figuring out how. ;-) You know this stuff more than anyone. Thinking
> outside the box, could a client side python script be written to
> interact with the server and place the maps in the correct location?

No I don't think so, the client didn't use the Python interpreter when
I was working on BF2.
 
>  From what I could figure out, the whole Demo download process was basic
> the exact same thing I am proposing. The server offers a link to the map
> and the client puts it in the correct location. It's already being done
> with the Demo, so how can we do this with the maps?

As I said earlier, the demo download mechanism is just that, a hook
from the server to let a client know where to download a demo file.
IIRC the user has to explicitly start the download herself, so there's
no auto-push involved.
 
>  As for map size of the maps, let's create a proof of concept, then
> figure out how to use compression to minimize the bandwidth impact.
> Another thought is if everyone offered this, maps would only have to be
> downloaded once. Eventually, the more popular custom maps will be
> offered all over the place and you will get an economy of scale. In
> fact, it would actually take less bandwidth over time than offering
> every single player a demo copy of every single match.

I think there are two options:

1) Write an external program (perhaps in Python) to communicate with a
new server-side service implemented alongside the rcon module
(download.py?) which would stream out maps or serve torrents. There
would be no way to get this working automatically in-game though.

2) Convince the good people at DICE generalize the URL/notify scheme
to allow download hooks. I think this has a fairly low priority (it
was never considered by EA for BF1942 for example).

// Andreas

-- 
And I hate redundancy, and having different functions for the same thing.
        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel