[Stupid Question]What are descriptors.

[cenron]

So I know this might be dumb so please just bare with me. My question is what are descriptors?

I understand what you use them for after you reverse engineer, so they represent a position within an array, within an object, item, player, npc.

My question is how are they used by the blizzard developers. Like how does there code look like when they are writing it to implement these, code doesn't always look the same once its been reversed.

If they are used in the same way as they are used by this forum, then why do it this way? There are to be a better way of doing it then creating arrays filled with data.

I have searched the net for "Descriptors" or Object Descriptors and could not find anything, can anyone post a link to a description on how these are used in code. Sound like this is something I haven't come across before.

Summary is: I dont know how a descriptor would be written in the orginal code, maybe used the same way, and if there are links to tutorials or descriptions on this programming style. Like if I wanted to implement something like this in my own code, how would I write it?

I do like discovering stuff for my self, but if anyone could suggest a search string, or what this is called, then that would be awesome.

[jjaa]

When the server sends an object update, they send the data and a bit mask of the positions in the array to modify. So in my opinion, an array is a good choice for the data. It needs to updated constantly and can easily be compressed (you can look at https://github.com/mangos/mangos/blo...e/UpdateMask.h for an example for the mask) in a packet. As for why they expose the information in the binary. I imagine its just a side affect of making the code easy to read and maintain, by creating a struct with the name, size and type information.

[cenron]

When the server sends an object update, they send the data and a bit mask of the positions in the array to modify. So in my opinion, an array is a good choice for the data. It needs to updated constantly and can easily be compressed (you can look at https://github.com/mangos/mangos/blo...e/UpdateMask.h for an example for the mask) in a packet. As for why they expose the information in the binary. I imagine its just a side affect of making the code easy to read and maintain, by creating a struct with the name, size and type information.

I understand now! thank you. The part I was missing was I assumed that this array was created and modified client side, but now it makes sense this is a way the server would send info from the server, make a whole lot more sense. Right after I read the first sentence the first thing I thought was "duh! I am an idiot" lol

Thanks man that clears so much up for me.