Okay, it's badly formed, in a way i mean a reference to a database of terrain data. I just couldn't find the correct expression for this.
Which should stay that way, yes. The cache however should get persistent and only be overwritten on a patch and/or a realtime world change.Istaria already does, it's your world cache. The server essentially hosts the master files which the client then uses a copy of. My console based ASCII game uses something like this to save changes to the maps for the current game while their unchanged state remains safe in reference files.
It is streaming, it's only that you store that. Another synonym would be partial downloading. In essence, it's partial downloading, which should be achieved.And this is not truly streaming as you were early suggesting, which is what Starstilanx and I were initially talking about. They're just static downloads as needed.
Which should stay as it is, it'll be a semistatic download then. (You cannot apply plot/lair changes otherwise, as those are truly manipulating terrain)You seem to not understand that the terrain data is already stored on a server, either on the individual shard servers or on a server of its own. Where do you think the client gets the terrain data from each time the cache is cleared? Either way, moving from dynamic downloads to static downloads would change absolutely nothing in this regard. So it doesn't have anything to do with it being a static download, and it should already be accounted for.
Anything that is on your own HDD can be manipulated easily. So can be downloaded terrain data. A version check is useless, hashing algorithms like CRC or MD5 is more change secure.And again I think you're severly underestimating what would be required to physically change the map data. Regardless, the danger of this happening wouldn't change from a dynamic download to a static download.
It interrupts gameplay. A temporary fix could be invulnerability for or that enemies ignore the character loading + 5 seconds after loading is finished (cancelling immediately after an action).Where have you heard that it interrupts 'regular gameplay flow data' ? The primary problem with the current method is that it causes long loading times, not that it interfers with other packets.