Re: Too many tasks? overhead questions.

[system@niuhep.physics.niu.edu]

eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>"Nick Roberts" <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com> writes:

>> Yes, provided the machine you are running on will allow it, you should use
>> a task to represent each character (player and NPC), as well as each object
>> in the game (e.g. a magic door which opens under certain conditions, etc.).

>  Sure have a task for each player, but objects should be protected
>objects--they don't need their own thread of control.  NPCs are an

I want to thank Robert and Nick for the suggestions, they are definately
going into the mill as I work on how I want to do this, but they don't
answer the primary question, which is 

how much overhead can I expect a few hundred tasks to involve?

And what kind of overhead?

hmmm, Most (90%?) of the tasks would involve NPCs most of whom
(well, at least 50%) would be quiescent most of the time.  So those
(say 40-60& of the character tasks) would be just taking up memory
but no cpu or I/O most of the time (I would make a WAG that for non-
central NPCs average interaction would occur no more than for 5 minutes
per hour.).

The alternative to threading is to have the central process poll each
and every character every tic (which is planned to be one second long).

<sigh>

Thanks again for the ideas, if anybody has some input to the overhead
question I would appreciate input.

Robert

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