if the physics will be implemented as it seems.. there needs to be a way to limit it without hurting gameplay. we all know how easy it is to crash a gmod server by just making things hit echother.
edit: damn it i posted this in tech diddnt i
I moved it.
I hope that was ok.
Yes, physics grief is a possibility but can be mitigated in a few ways. In the real game, that fact that objects cost resources will automatically limit how many objects are active.
Even still, a player could take all of their resources and potentially make 1000 little things to gum the works. I think this case is detectable tough and there might be a few ways I can handle it.
One thing, objects that are inactive go to sleep and so aren't directly handled by the physics engine. They do get factored into collision detection, though... but will generally be ruled out pretty quickly.
Also, the physics engine is setup to be as stable as possible... so if there are lots of objects it will simply slow down rather than do bad math. I'm worried if I go too far down that explanation that peoples' eyes will start to glaze over.
Suffice it to say, spamming objects will cause lag... but that's already true. Spamming objects will also cause the physics simulation to run in what appears to be slow motion.
If I detect these cases then I could put all or some of the objects "to sleep"... meaning they would freeze wherever they were until touched again. This would limit griefing to just causing physics to pause for some objects... which is probably acceptable.
This is something I think about a lot though.