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Networking Notes

  • All objects are on "rails" which can be sampled at points in time.
    • Planets are on [[Kepler]] rails. They can be sampled at any point in time just by solving Keplers equation.
    • Ships/Missiles are N-Body-ish - they are pulled by everything that's on a Kepler rail but not by each other.
  • Types of objects:
    • Planets/Moons (Kepler)
    • Missiles (N-Body)
    • Ships (N-Body)

Planets/Moons​

Orbital elements are part of the scenario, initialised at the start of the game and sampled independently by every client every frame.

Ships/Missiles​

Each client calculates 2 rails:

  • True rail. This is where the ship will actually be, taking into account all engine burns
    • Only ever needs to be recalculated if an unexpected force happens (e.g. an impact)
    • Sometimes must be cut back to a certain time, if an engine burn is added or removed from the schedule.
  • Estimated rail. This is where the ship will be, simply based on extrapolating out from current position and velocity.
    • Needs to be recalculated if the position diverges too much.
    • Can just "copy the homework" of the true rail up until the first engine burn.

Both rails are sent over the network. Other clients display the estimated rail, but sample from the true rail.