Game Development Community

How to seperate Client from Server

by Shannara · in Torque Game Engine · 09/25/2003 (4:19 pm) · 10 replies

I have yet to look at the SDK, as I am at work, but a quick question...

Is there a "dedicated client" and a "dedicated server" source?

Reason being, it would make no sense to distribute the server w/ the client when you just want the client distributed. And the server on your own dedicated computer.

#1
09/26/2003 (1:35 am)
No - the sources are not separated, and I dont think its even possible to think that way (in the Torque mindset).
#2
09/26/2003 (5:40 am)
Like Quake, Torque is sort of inherently both a client and a server... seperating the two "parts" would be very very painful. Don't worry, the overhead is pretty small; if you're worried you can not distribute the server-side scripts with the client, and vice versa.
#3
09/26/2003 (8:30 am)
Is there any way around this? As this is extremely disappointing news.

Maybe such as disable the command line for dedicated server and not have "hosting game" as an option?

Can anybody point me to the right direction?
#4
09/26/2003 (8:38 am)
Ben already has.
#5
09/26/2003 (8:44 am)
Not really. Im not looking to seperate any longer. Just disable the "psuedo client" from ever running as a server. Not packaging the server scripts with the client wont help because they would still be able to run a server.
#6
09/26/2003 (8:56 am)
They aren't going to get very far running a server if they don't have the server scripts, are they?

If they write server scripts from scratch, let 'em run their own. They've earned it at that point. ;)
#7
09/26/2003 (9:18 am)
Lol, not really. You see, I am trying to prevent them from even trying to run a server or even a symbolance (sp?) of a server for this game.

If this is not possible with Torque, then it is quite useless for a strict client/server environment :(
#8
09/26/2003 (9:23 am)
It's not possible for any engine, Shannara.

Any server application in the world can be reverse engineered. Happens all the time.
#9
09/26/2003 (9:39 am)
You could fairly easily prevent the client code from accepting incoming connections - do a multi-file search on the engine source for "mAllowConnections" and go from there.

You still won't be able to prevent someone from disassembling your client exe, but you can make creating a server prohibitively difficult.
#10
09/26/2003 (9:45 am)
Mark Moz:

Yep, any pure server program, Torque isnt one of those, its a combination of a client and a server. There's the difference.

Mark Froh:

That was what I mean, making it as difficult as possible. Thanks for the lead. I'm going to shift through the code tonight.