06-06-2012, 06:15 PM
I've been refactoring item drops and I've come across a decision that needs to be made.
If a block mined drops multiple items of the same type, do we:
- create a pickup for each of the item?
- create one pickup that represents all of the items?
The first approach is visually correct - lapis ore blocks drop 4 lapis dye items, etc. But it has the disadvantage of slowing the server down and potentially flooding the clients with too much network traffic - each item needs a packet to spawn and some CPU + RAM to handle.
The second approach would be visually confusing to new players, but better for server performance.
So, which one should it be?
If a block mined drops multiple items of the same type, do we:
- create a pickup for each of the item?
- create one pickup that represents all of the items?
The first approach is visually correct - lapis ore blocks drop 4 lapis dye items, etc. But it has the disadvantage of slowing the server down and potentially flooding the clients with too much network traffic - each item needs a packet to spawn and some CPU + RAM to handle.
The second approach would be visually confusing to new players, but better for server performance.
So, which one should it be?