Re: Too many tasks? overhead questions.

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Robert Eachus said

<<  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
interesting issue, those pinned in a certain place should probably be
treated as objects, those that wander the dungeon should have their
own task or tasks.  (Of course, if you have one task for all NPCs,
make sure that NPCs don't try to interact...)>>


Robert Dewar notes

Be very careful about recommending the use of protected types. They are
by no means a general abstraction mechanism (the abstraction is severely
limited by the restriction on potentially blocking operations0.

We have found a lot of users getting themselves into trouble, e.g. by
doing a delay directly or indirectly in a protected operation, which is
of course erroneous.

It is clear that a lot of users (not surprisingly) do not understand
this restriction.

Unless efficiency is an overriding concern, it is better to use tasks
for synchronization, since there you have no such concerns.