Best way to create game

Questions & Answers
1

Hi!
I’m working on an MMORPG. I am stuck right now.
What is the best way to make the item system?
I was thinking about to make an external database in a file which includes something like this:

<Item id="290" name="Sword" type="1" value1="40" value2="20"/>

Like this every time i modify some value on the server side, i have to make a change in the client. But it is more more optimized, and quicker. In this system I can make several language packs. I like this one. I just cannot manage this, I need some solution to make a coded file to store these data, and the decryption for the client side, so every time I modify something i don’t have to rebuild the whole solution.

Is it ok? Or should I get the data from the server every time I make a closer look on an Item? In this way every time i watch an item, i have to get the data from the server. It may be slow.

An other idea: When I log in i ask for the items (in an mmorpg this is more than a thousand items) and i download all the data. (It may be a bad idea)
Please help me!

[I do not consider myself a beginner, I can program quite well, but here is a problem what i cannot solve! Thanks for the help!]

2

Everyone has all the item data from installing the game, no? It doesn’t seem necessary to pass all the data. You only need a reference or id for the item.

All images and models are present so even sending a thousand lines like yours above wouldn’t be too bad, just I don’t recommend it for a large user base.

The idea is to use the absolute minimum bandwidth and server/client transactions as you can get away with. Let the clients to the work and in cases of discrepancy, “Banker always wins”.

If you walk up to another character, it isn’t necessary to know the entire contents of his bag, and if you did for some reason want to know this, sectioning it in to pages or something would really help to ease the bandwidth as the information is not required all at once.

You can do this any way you like but I’d go for the general rule of essential data only and over as long a time as you can get away with.