Well I think the biggest problem here is the one you are seeing. I don't know whether or not Lee's DBPro compiler cleans up the rotation matricies of each object occasionally (I assume it does) but the problem with turn object and move object is that eventually you are going to see that different client computers have different avatars out of phase with each other. Much better to shift to an absolute positioning system.
In fact with an absolute positioning system you could go one step further and have a feedback loop built in. It would be simplicity itself to check if each avatar is correctly positioned. All you'd need to do is get the vector representing the avatar's directional facing (pick screen centre screen x, centre screen y, 1 for each user). Thats three items of data: an X, a Y and a Z dimension. Then compare that against a master list held by the server. That'd tell each client whether it has its avators positioned correctly.
Three items of data for each avatar shouldn't be too much data to chuck around I'd hope.
In fact, I forgot that TOPIA runs in what is effectively a 2D plane, namely the X/Z plane. Y is irrelevant because each user can't look up or down. So in fact you'd only need to chuck the X and Z dimensions around. Even less data load on the system.
Cheers
Philip
What do you mean, bears aren't supposed to wear hats and a tie? P3.2ghz / 1 gig / GeForce FX 5900 128meg / WinXP home
