[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [Patch][RFC] Reduce superfluous tile_info packets

[Jason Dorje Short <vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Raimar Falke wrote:
> 
> The attached patch is a rough first version of a patch which change
> the server to only sent tile information if this information has
> really changed.
> 
> Test: loading a normal game (1600AD) and pressing three times return.
> Results (packet type 7 is tile info):
> 
>   without patch:
> 2:   [ 7]:  41882 packets;   376938 bytes total;     9 bytes/packet average
> 2: transmitted 534864 bytes in 44000 packets;average size per packet 12 bytes
> 
>   with patch:
> 2:   [ 7]:   4076 packets;    36684 bytes total;     9 bytes/packet average
> 2: transmitted 185739 bytes in 6000 packets;average size per packet 30 bytes
> 
> Note that 4000 packets are needed at the start to transfer all tiles
> to the client. The human player has the Apollo Program.

Wow, is that for real?

Some technical comments:

The "n" parameter of map_tile_set_changed does nothing, right?  It's just a
temporary debugging tool?

What is the purpose of base_map_[set|clear]_special?  In
map_[set|clear]_special, you can't call MAP_TILE before normalizing (until
we move to the check_map_pos system, anyway).



What about a macro to turn this

-  MAP_TILE(x, y)->continent = val;
+  if (MAP_TILE(x, y)->continent != val) {
+    MAP_TILE(x, y)->continent = val;
+    map_tile_set_changed(x, y, NULL, 0);
+  }

into

#define MAP_SET(x, y, identifier, value, player)   \
{                                                  \
  if (MAP_TILE(x, y)->identifier != value) {       \
    MAP_TILE(x, y)->identifier = value;            \
    map_tile_set_changed(x, y, player);            \
  }                                                \
}

MAP_SET(x, y, continent, val, NULL);

jason