Synposis
To be able to access, edit, and provide all the functionality of the standard C file access functions across a TCP connection to a server that authenticates the user and provides permissions.
Rational
To my knowledge, there's no existing function that provides transparent file access to a network file. It's mainly just proof-of-concept, but I think I can come up with a couple different ideas.
Applications
For dial up users it may be obvious, to transfer compressed (and possibly encrypted) files across a networking medium. All transfers will be locally cached and an MD5 hash provided. When the remote hash changes, the local cache is cleared, and everything has to be redownloaded for simplicity's sake. Take B.E.T.A. for example. If a file (like a torrent) is downloaded, it could be possible for the game to transfer parts of the file on demand (or the whole thing, or the whole thing in the background). That means you can start playing as soon as enough data is downloaded without waiting for the whole thing to download.
Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?
Extended (Edit, Jan 3/06, 2251Z)
This would NOT be peer-to-peer, but a server, much like a tracker, would serve files. All the client would need to know is the server and filename of the file to get.
Over the Internet File Access
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Just so everyone knows, I gave Q permission to use this forum for this kind of thing. He has a lot of interesting ideas and he needs a place to put them.
On topic:
If you could somehow make the caching completly transparent, I could try to implement it in a test program. I still think it's kind-of an odd concept. Write up a beta and we'll see where we're at.
On topic:
If you could somehow make the caching completly transparent, I could try to implement it in a test program. I still think it's kind-of an odd concept. Write up a beta and we'll see where we're at.