RFE: Pipe nav data to a socket, rather than a file

[TJJ]

Allow 3rd party apps to connect to a running instance of EM via a local socket, so that EM can stream the nav data directly to the client app.

It'd be much more efficient & flexible than communicating to 3rd party apps via the file system.
For instance; updates in the 3rd party app could be done at real-time rather than the current >1000ms.

There are two relatively easy workarounds I can think of, but neither of them are 'good'.
1) mount a ram disk, and have the savedata.txt written to it.
This would get around much of the gross inefficiency of writing to the file system, but synchronizing the polling at sub-second timings may become unreliable.
2) write a socket proxy that sits between EM & the EM server, intercepting the data sent to the server.
This would avoid the problems of polling, but it'd only work in MP, and would obviously be limited to the set of data sent between client & server.

[Maarschalk]

This sound as an interesting Idea. I think there might be some security issues with cheats and exploits that players could use to gain an unfair advantage!...

[TJJ]

This sound as an interesting Idea. I think there might be some security issues with cheats and exploits that players could use to gain an unfair advantage!...

You seem somewhat preoccupied with the possibility of cheating!

The player profiles are stored locally, as is the universe map data, and I doubt very much that the MP server does any validation on what it receives from the client.
Suffice to say the game is already wide open for all manner of cheating.

However as this isn't a competitive game, cheating is IHMO entirely irrelevant - they'd just be cheating themselves out of gameplay.

:edit:

Having said that, there is still an aspect of security worth worrying about - server stability.
It can be quite disruptive & annoying when client side server crash exploits are discovered. Hopefully EM's community doesn't yet contain any such technically competent trolls with malicious intent.

[Edited on 2-10-2012 by TJJ]

[Marvin]

We had one about a year ago (maybe longer). He left.

[Maarschalk]

This sound as an interesting Idea. I think there might be some security issues with cheats and exploits that players could use to gain an unfair advantage!...

You seem somewhat preoccupied with the possibility of cheating!

The player profiles are stored locally, as is the universe map data, and I doubt very much that the MP server does any validation on what it receives from the client.
Suffice to say the game is already wide open for all manner of cheating.

However as this isn't a competitive game, cheating is IHMO entirely irrelevant - they'd just be cheating themselves out of gameplay.

:edit:

Having said that, there is still an aspect of security worth worrying about - server stability.
It can be quite disruptive & annoying when client side server crash exploits are discovered. Hopefully EM's community doesn't yet contain any such technically competent trolls with malicious intent.

[Edited on 2-10-2012 by TJJ]

Trolls with malicious intent are severely persecuted in this Universe!.....