Clean MVC design when there is viewer latency
- by Tony Suffolk 66
It isn't clear if this question has already been answered, so apologies in advance if this is a duplicate :
I am implementing a game and trying to design around a clean MVC pattern - so my Control plane will implement the rules of the game (but not how the game is displayed), and the View plane implements how the game is displayed, and user iteraction - i.e. what game items or controls the user has activated. The challenge that I have is this :
In my game the Control Plane can move game items more or less instaneously (The decision about what item to place where - and some of the initial consequences of that placement are reasonably trivial to calculate), but I want to design the Control Plane so that the View plane can display these movements either instaneously or using movement animations.
The other complication is that player interaction must be locked out while those game items are moving (similar to chess - you can't attack an opposing piece as it moves past one of your pieces)
So do I :
Implement all the logic in the Control Plane asynchronously - and separate the descision making from the actions - so the Control plane decides piece 'A' needs to move to a given place - tells the view plane, and but does not implement the move in data until the view plane informs the control plane that the move/animation is complete. A lot of interlock points between the two layers.
Implement all the control plane logic in one place - decisions and movement (keeping track of what moved where), and pass all the movements in one go to the View plane to do with what it will. Control Plane is almost fire and forget here.
A hybrid of 1 & 2 - The control plane implements all the moves in a temporary data store - but maintains a second store which reflects what is actually visible to the viewer, based on calls and feedback from the View plane.
All 3 are relatively easy to implement (target language is python), but having never done a clean MVC pattern with view latency before - I am not sure which design is best
