Data Attachment Sync API

[Syst3ms]

Completes the data attachment API with client-server syncing capabilities.

Motivation

The existing API works great for attaching data to game objects, be they serverside or clientside, but lacks any ability to synchronize between the two.

A mod that wants to add a "thirst" mechanic can easily do so on the server side by attaching an integer to every player. However, the mod may also want to use this information to render additional HUD elements on the client. Currently, informing the client of this data can only be done manually, which is cumbersome, error-prone, and is much better-suited as an API feature.

API Changes

The API doesn't change a lot (at least compared to the implementation), with a few new methods and one new class.

One new method has been added to AttachmentRegistry.Builder, namely syncWith. It declares that an attachment type may be synchronized with some clients, and takes a PacketCodec to encode attachment data over the network, as well as an element of the new AttachmentSyncPredicate interface.

This interface extends BiPredicate<AttachmentTarget, ServerPlayerEntity> to allow for user-defined predicates, and provides some common presets:

• all(): attachment data will be synchronized with all clients (that track the target).
• targetOnly(): attachment data will only be synchronized with the target it is attached to, when it is a player. If the target is not a player, it won't be synchronized with any client.
• allButTarget(): reverse of the above. For non-player targets, attachment data will be synchronized with all clients.

NOTE: for a user-defined condition, whether attachment data is synchronized with a client can change at runtime (e.g. "sync only with operators" when a player changes operator status). A specialized method to "refresh" data was considered, but in the end discarded due to complexity. It falls to individual mods to handle these edge cases.

AttachmentType also gets one new isSynced method to know whether a given attachment type can be synced.

Usage

Here is how one could register an attachment for a "thirst" meter like mentioned above.

public static final AttachmentType<Integer> THIRST = AttachmentRegistry.<Integer>builder() 
    .initializer(() -> 20) // start with a default value like hunger
    .persistent(Codec.INT) // persist across restarts
    .syncWith(PacketCodecs.VAR_INT.cast(), AttachmentSyncPredicate.targetOnly()) // only the player's own client needs the value for rendering
    .buildAndRegister(Identifier.of("modid", "thirst"));

To-do:

• Add API options for "sync with all players", "sync with target only", "sync with non-targets only"
• Use the above to precompute "global" changes that can be broadcast to anyone on the fly
• Finish testmod
• Test testmod

[modmuss50]

This looks like a good start, however there is a lot going on here. We need to be especially careful with C2S packets. Im especially worried about the refreshAttachments, in an ideal world I dont think it should be needed at all.

[Syst3ms]

Some code changes are still required, before trying the testmod