well lads, i guess you already wonder, why you don't hear so very much from my side. i was working on code transformation to a more portable scheme during the last weeks and it was ... a heck a lot of work. well, today i finally saw the end of the tunnel (not just the light) so my transformation (that i was working on for months (years?)) now finally nears its end.
to any of you that know a little about HL1 code: I for example removed the event calls and instead use messages to call the event effect functions on the client. but i don't just do it 1 to 1 as this description might suggest. instead the messages are sent when the player hits the attack key (or reload) and all the rest is calculated on the client. that means, basically traffic is reduced to the input changes from the keyboards of every player and the shared values controlled by the server. all the rest is calculated on each client. each client has its own tree of shared objects that represent the players, robots and weapons and areas and artifacts (and some other little stuff). with that knowledge he can calculate the game state rather independently. to illustrate that: i for example suddenly had a huge improvement on the burst fire responsiveness.
well, the work isn't done yet and cant be finished until after my finals. but i assure you, it is on an incredibly good way. i guess i will be back around the 10th of January.