Imlight

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Player Architecture ​

When a player connects to Imlight, their presence is represented across three distinct components, each serving a different purpose.

The Three Components ​

Wizard ​

The Wizard is the persistent data representation of a player character. This object contains all of the durable state and behaviors relating to a character, including:

Among other things.

It's worthwhile to understand that behaviors are modular components that may not be unique to the Wizard object. For example, the ServerWizEquipmentBehavior is also used by zone creatures. That being said, behaviors should not make database actions. They should only represent state and behavior.

The Wizard class is responsible for database actions. It loads and saves the behaviors it contains, and it is the only object that should be doing so.

TIP

Think of the Wizard as the "save file" for a character.

Explaining Persistence ​

As mentioned, both player characters (wizards) and zone creatures use the ServerWizEquipmentBehavior. The reason we don't want database actions within the behavior itself is because of this mutual use.

The difference lies in how the data is sourced:

  • For wizards, the data is loaded from and saved to the database
  • For zone creatures, the data is loaded from a template

The behavior must be agnostic to the source of its data. It simply represents the state and behavior of equipment, regardless of whether that equipment belongs to a player character or a zone creature. By centralizing database actions in the Wizard class, we ensure that only player characters interact with the database.

Session Actor ​

The Session Actor is a transient object that represents a player's connection to the server. It is created when a player connects and destroyed when they disconnect. The Session Actor is responsible for managing the player's network connection, handling incoming messages, and sending outgoing messages.

See the Session Actor article for more information.

Game Object ​

The Game Object is a transient object that represents the player's presence in the game world. It is created when a player enters a zone and destroyed when they leave. The Game Object is responsible for managing the player's position, movement, and interactions with other objects in the game world.

Lifecycle and Relationships ​

Connection Flow ​

When a player connects to Imlight, these components come into existence at different stages:

  1. TCP Connection → Session Actor is created
  2. Authentication → Session Actor links to an Account
  3. Character Selection → Session Actor may load Wizard data for preview
  4. Enter World → Session Actor activates Wizard and creates Game Object
  5. Disconnect → Game Object destroyed, Wizard saved, Session Actor terminated