fysxasteroids/engine/doc/Mainpage.h

109 lines
5.7 KiB
C++

/** \file documentation.h \mainpage Main Page
*
* This is the documentation of Engine -- a game engine without a name.
*
* \section General Information
*
* To get an overview over the most important functions and classes have a
* look at Engine. For the structure of the Engine look at Engine::Engine. In
* \ref usecases you find documentation on how things are supposed to work and
* what the ideas behind certain designs is.
*
* \section Physics
*
* So far we only use a very simple physics system which is mostly defined by
* the Engine::Physics class. It uses the coll2d collision library. Collision
* response so far only tries to prevent interpenetration.
*
* \section Networking
*
* For easier networking it is assumed that everything runs over a network.
* The game itself is rather a smart client to a simple synchronization
* protocol. What is being synchronized is the game state and the client
* simply displays the current state it knows. The client is "smart" as it
* tries to guess what the next state will be.
*
* For networking we want to use Enet http://enet.bespin.org/.
*
* Notes for networking: At
* http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=550962 is an
* interesting thread about modeling the updates. Especially the answer of
* Antheus at http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/viewreply.asp?ID=3546077
* describes two fundamental models:
*
* Level Triggering (GoF Observer Pattern): Entity A sends its changes to the
* Observer pattern and all objects that are interested in the state of Entity
* A get notfied by the observer.
*
* Edge Triggering: For each Entity A the Observer B is interested, it stores
* a flag for a value it is interested in (e.g. one for position, one for
* velocity, etc.). When Entity A modifies one of the values it notifies the
* observer that its current state has changed and the Observer sets the flag
* to "dirty". Anyone interested in events polls at the Observer and decides
* what to do with it. When the value is queried, the Observer reads the value
* from the Entity and clears the flag.
*
* For networking a combination can be used: During the simulation loop only
* Edge Triggering is performed and at the end of it, all dirty States get
* sent over the network.
*
* When notifying events such as "Add new Entity X" the user tomv describes at
* http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/viewreply.asp?ID=3545586 a method
* to circumvent these messages. Instead, the server simply sends out updates
* about the Entities around a player where close Entities are updated more
* frequently than ones that are further away. It simply sends "Entity X
* changed by D". If a client does not know what the Entity X is, it queries
* the type and current state of the Entity X and therefore reconstructs the
* surroundings step-by-step. It is also robust against dropped messages of
* the form "Add new Entity X".
*
* At tomvas model there are some problems: How are events "Delete Entity X"
* handled? How to handle malicious clients that request the state of all
* Entities? (Solution for the last question: Request Queues).
*
* Kylotan cals tomvas model as a unreliable system for generic state
* [synchronization?] (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/viewreply.asp?ID=3548662).
* Additionally he mentions that it can increase occurences of short term
* unsynchronous states and reccomends using some reliable message passing.
*
* \section ToDos
*
* This is a loose list of items that are to be implemented. For a list of all
* todos within the code have a look at the \ref todo.
*
* \todo [high] Create a simple racing or asteroids game
* \todo [med] disallow or fix resize of the game window
*
* These are the (for now) postponed todos:
*
* \todo [med] Use shared_ptr instead of raw pointers for the Entities
* \todo [med] Clear all references of EntityVisualState and EntityGameState
* \todo [med] Clarify functionalities of CreateEntity, KillEntity, RegisterEntity, UnregisterEntity (which frees memory, which does only change the state of the Model?)
* \todo [med] Add basic networking
* \todo [med] Add serialization
* \todo [med] Add cal3d support
* \todo [med] Smooth Physics at convex collisions (somehow there is jitter)
* \todo [med] Create better collsion response
* \todo [med] In rare cases two Actors can penetrate each other (probably at slow velocities)
* \todo [low] Add a timer object to keep track of what is sucking performance.
* \todo [low] Add a inspector widget that shows information about a selected Entity
* \todo [low] Use a std::map<string, string> as initialization parameters for
* Engine::Module::Init()
*
* Done:
* \todo [high] (01-02-2011) fix collisions that go over boundaries
* \todo [med] (30-01-2011) add Engine::GUI::CheckKeyPressed that checks for completed key presses
* \todo [med] (30-01-2011) fix LineEdit input which generates blanks when entering backspace for an empty edit
* \todo [high] (30-01-2011) fix random crashes for certain characters (has to do with boundary box computation in OGLFT) fix: disabled debug assertion for proper boundary box merging.
* \todo [high] (28-11-2010) Enable saving of music and effects volume
* \todo [high] (28-11-2010) Allow transitions when player dies
* \todo [high] (11-09-2010) Since introduction of the IMGUI pressing 'space' in the menu crashes the game
* - [high] In Physics remove dependancy on the Model to pass on collision
* events
* - [high] Fix Physics bug when two actors collide actively (i.e. velocity
* towards each other)
* - [med] Better Game Input so that each Entity has its own ControllerState
* that can be modified
* - [med] (31-01-2009) Add support for loading levels (and saving!)
*/