Re: bug in infantry building a base which is already started

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

On Wed, 26 May 2004, Hans Ronne wrote:

> A followup: the easiest way to fix the build code is of course to iterate
> over units instead of unit views. Since that code is checking that the
> builder and the target is on the same side, the latter will always be fully
> visible to the builder, so there is really no point in using unit views
> here.

I had considered what you suggest. However, one cannot assume that 
all units in a cell are on the same side as the builder. And since 
this is a task, and not an action-handler, we should not be giving 
the task special knowledge about another side's units. If we ever 
get to the point where we have a true client-server architecture, 
we may regret making such assumptions. This is why I still think 
it is better to loop through the unit views, and then retrieve the 
actual unit once we know it is on our side. If we loop through 
units instead, and compare their sides, then we are, in some 
sense, cheating.

Eric

P.S. I understand that with a real client-server architecture, we 
would not have direct access to the side's actual units either, 
but instead a shadow copy of them. Nonetheless, the above point is 
still valid, IMO.