At this time Varium does not support dedicated servers. The host, or initiator of the game, determines the content (maps, models, etc) and various attributes about the game (length of game, etc). Depending on the specific map, individuals will have the ability to use different themes than the host or other players. As Randall has stated, this will be allowed for the lowest-common-denominator maps, in which the fundamental properties (physics, rate of fire, range, damage, etc) of actors, weapons and projectiles are all shared. Thus the appearance (skins, and even entire meshes used by the actors) can vary between players. The mesh comprising the world (map) must of course be identical for all players.
In Varium the term "map" is used rather loosely. The world, which is the BSP and all the polys it organizes, can be constructed at load-time from many seperate meshes that can reside in multiple files. So "map", as in the world in which the gameplay takes place, is a suite of mesh file(s) and the configuration files that bind them all together. That is one of the reasons that Varium is extremely mod-able, without even having to use a 3D mesh editor.
I certainly forsee the ability to automatically transfer game content from one player to another (for example if you join a game containing mod files you do not have); First, it is very easy to implement on my end, and Second, it is relatively difficult to transfer files to and from Pocket PCs over the internet (it requires specialized 3rd party software to transfer from one PPC to another over the internet, or at least dedicated servers hosting the datafiles from which to download from). However, there would be some issues that would have to be addressed. The official game content would not be moddable, and would not be overwritten. So for example, say someone hacked up all the config files so all the weapons fire extremely fast and come with 1,000 rounds of ammo, then if you connect to a game they host it should not overwrite all of your official content and screw up your weapons. So we will have to balance the ability of a mod to utilize components of the official content (models, meshes, etc), while segregating the custom files to another location. This is even more important (picking and choosing components of the official content) on a PPC because of the limited file storage capacity. The other issue is copy protection, insuring that components that are sold separately are not copied automatically from one player to another. That would be rather stupid from the business point of view.
Dan East
Varium Info
by James S » Feb 11, 2003 @ 5:51am 
