Merging TNL Back into TGE

#1 Isn't TNL already in Torque? :S
I thought it was just a "bit" cleaned up and made for those that don't want to use Torque but the network layer.

#2 Oh, so that is what it is... but then why is the license of TNL more expensive the TGE itself.. that doesn't make ANY sense..

?

- Rasmus

#3 Greetings!

Well, I understood that it was more than just yanking the network code out of the TGE. Mark seemed to have put a lot of work into it. To quote the TNL manual:

Quote:The final step in the history of the Torque Network Library was to refactor its constituent parts into a standalone network technology that didn't require any other components from the Torque Game Engine. As a part of this process, significant library structural improvements were made; every class and class member were documented, and strong encryption support was added. Other new features include a simple and powerful Remote Procedure Call (RPC) mechanism, client puzzles for protecting servers from server CPU depletion Denial-of-Service attacks, and 3rd-party negotiated direct connections to connect clients behind firewalls and NAT (Network Address Translation) routers, making TNL a robust, full-featured, secure networking solution for a wide variety of applications.

One advantage we have is taking a look at the OpenTNL source and deciding for ourselves.

- LightWave Dave

#4 Take a look and decide how much work it is. :)

I don't know.

#5 There has been some discussion of doing this. It has some practical values such as network fixes to TNL propogating to TGE/TSE as well as one network codebase to maintain. Can't say this will actually happen and certainly can't comment on any timeline, but it has been discussed.

#6 Brian,

I've seen those forum posts in the past asking if you guys were going to move TNL into the TGE. I certainly wasn't looking for a freebee out of you guys here.

I was more wondering if one was to do it themselves, if any of you had some pointers or a list of possible pitfalls. But, of course, if it hasn't been done in the office yet, then you can't. :o)

I'll have to take Ben's advice...

- LightWave Dave

#7 If someone does happen to take this on - please report results, or submit a resource to show what it took to get the job done. I don't have time ta' try it, but, one of my future projects could really benefit from a couple of the items in TNL, and it might be worth buying and integrating it back into TGE (or, TSE if it's released by the time I want to do inital deployment :-)

#8 One problem is that work is gonna be relative. For me, having stared at Torque for a year or two, and having Mark/Tim/Rick around, it's probably going to be easier to, say, integrate TNL with TGE than it would be for someone else...

So that's a really hard question to answer. :)

#9 I think at some point soon we'll have a resource for TNL that will allow it to be easily used with Torque's networking -- so you'll still use Torque for communicating with Torque servers, but you can use the new TNL features to talk to a custom master server, arrange connections, etc.

#10 Mark,

That sounds cool. I look forward to it.

- LightWave Dave

#11 Does anybody know if the resource that Mark was talking about on the 21st of april, 2004 was ever completed? If so where? Thx