Client side entities?

[CyborgGamer21]

I there such thing were you can render a entity but only have it exist/render on the client? And if so how would you do it?

[Cadiboo]

Entities kinda need to be both client & server side. Not having them on both leads to desync and weird bugs

Edited January 2, 2019 by Cadiboo

[TestingSubject002]

  On 1/2/2019 at 2:20 AM, CyborgGamer21 said:

I there such thing were you can render a entity but only have it exist/render on the client? And if so how would you do it?

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What do you want to achieve with this?

[Eiachh]

Well to be fair it is possibly without any bug AS FAR AS THEY DONT INTERRACT WITH THE PLAYER

I remember the old minecraft beta version had the "animal mod" with horses etc and they spawned on servers for me because i had the mode. But they wont be able to interract with anything in any form. So basically just rendered graphics.

Also I was into proxies and other weird stuff in mmorpg's so I am sure you could even make them be interractable for you if they would use Only vanilly packets towards the sever to communicate but that is complicated as hell and would need way too much research. If you don't even have an idea how would that work i would just abandone the idea of this paragraph.(also it can go into the direction when it is considered as hacking sooo :shrug: )

[Cadiboo]

  On 1/2/2019 at 11:54 AM, Eiachh said:

Well to be fair it is possibly without any bug AS FAR AS THEY DONT INTERRACT WITH THE PLAYER

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No, networking IDs would break

[desht]

  On 1/2/2019 at 1:54 PM, Cadiboo said:

No, networking IDs would break

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Actually, it is possible, and a working example is the PneumaticCraft Programmable Controller: https://github.com/TeamPneumatic/pnc-repressurized/blob/master/src/main/java/me/desht/pneumaticcraft/common/tileentity/TileEntityProgrammableController.java#L153

 

The drone entity is only created and spawned client-side, and it does work.  Obviously the entity has no AI, so the only movement is whatever the client sets the entity's position to (in this case, the server gives the client a target position, and the client-side entity simply moves toward that position). This works fine as an indicator for the position that the Programmable Controller tile entity is currently operating at.

[jabelar]

The issue is that the term "entity" usually implies a number of things (such as registration) and functionality (like AI) that is expected to also be run on the server.

 

ESPECIALLY note that if you want to do the following then the server MUST be involved:

• Syncing across multiple clients so that all players can see the entity.
• Saving so that the entity persists across saves.

There are cases though where it can make sense for an entity that exists only for each play on the client side. In that case I think your best bet for client-side "entity" behavior is to create your own system. All an entity really is is a loop of code that runs along with some rendering. So you can simply have a tick handler running the AI and some rendering that hooks into the normal rendering process. But it is somewhat of an advanced approach that would require decent programming skills and fairly high modding experience.

[Frontear]

It is possible. You'd simply need to add a ghost entity to the current world, and not allow it to sync with the server. I'm curious why you want this though. Additionally, this client-sided entity won't be able to do anything, other than exist on your screen. Kinda pointless, no?

[Cadiboo]

The one use of it I can think of was mentioned in a thread about how to teleport the player’s camera around without moving the player

[CyborgGamer21]

The client side entity was planned to be a little companion that would follow you around.

[DaemonUmbra]

Is there a reason this has to be client-side-only?

[Laike_Endaril]

If you want the companion to be visible to other players, it needs to be server-side.

 

If you want the companion to interact with the world, in some cases it *could* be done client-side, but in the massive majority of those cases, it would be considered a client exploit / hack mod on many servers, so it should be done server-side.  Note that I'm not counting basic physics here; if you want it to hop around on the ground using blocks the client knows about to collide with, that's fine.

 

If this is purely visual, and does not interact with the world in any way that could be considered a client hack / expoit, then it might be viable to do client-side, but note that no other players on the server will be able to see it.  If you're fine with these circumstances, I would actually say that in this very specific case, it's better to do this client-side than to do it server-side, as it won't use server resources or cause any additional network traffic.

As for *how* to accomplish it, I'm not helping with that part!  Good luck! XD

Edited January 19, 2019 by Laike_Endaril
Grammar