I recently played a game in which, well, my minimap was being updated more often than the game itself, as far as I could tell. I understand perfectly that games today are not designed with dial-up in mind, but I feel that making the minimap update speed partially client-side is perfectly feasible. Basically, have the update speed for the minimap as a server-side variable (like it already is). Say some admin sets it to 10hz, or 100ms/update, or whatever. Have a client side option that's something along the lines of "Minimap update priority" or some such. Basically, setting it to high or server-time or something means that it updates every time the server wants it to update. However, if a client has it set to, say, medium, then the server only updates it to medium players every other minimap update. Low, every third minimap update. Ultra-low, every fourth, or maybe every tenth. Better yet, also have there be a cvar that can be player-controlled, so people like me can make the multiplier something ridiculous like 10. I wouldn't mind a minimap that's a bit behind the times and only updates once a second if it helps me drive mah dern tanks some. Every little bit helps. I understand perfectly that this is the kind of feature that is really low-priority, if it would matter at all. I also understand that the League might appreciate there being some kind of special "emp_lock_client_minimap_rate" cvar or something :-P Anyway, yeah, just me mumbling something odd.
Actually, its how the source engine works. You will notice that you and all the players near you will update as quick as they do in the game, but ones on the other side of the map update twice a second (very slow). There is a server-side variable that can send the updated positions more frequently, but considering Empires already uses up alot more bandwidth than other source games I would expect that server admins would be reluctant to set it any higher. I think it would be a good idea to give the minimap prediction capabilities, where it will guess where the player is - at least for the vehicles. But I would prefer having a higher update speed by default.
higher update speed = more lag. perhaps it could be an option, for higher speed connections, or it could auto scale depending on your connection, but i know for a fact that the minimap consumes a lot of network bandwidth because it has to know the position of everything, all the time.
Remember, this isn't necessarily the ENGINE we're talking about, this is EMPIRES we're talking about. If Krenzo didn't make the minimap update visible entities based on the client's other information concerning those entities, then yeah (though he probably did make it that way). What I'm basically asking for is the ability to SLOW IT DOWN, not to speed it up. Sure, it'd be nice if there were a server-side variable allowing it to go faster for those with fast connections, but that doesn't help me at all unless there's a way for the client to ask the server to only update that client every nth time it updates everyone else. I have no qualms about a minimap that makes no damn sense at all.
Niarbeht: did you try to check if CPlayerResource and CVehicleResource are the classes(entities) that really do transmit that much?
