-IOU One Title-

I started off this week by learning how to implement and code threads. Threads are kind of like tiny little sub-programs, which act together to form a larger program. Threads are given their own small amount of processing time, and can even reserve a little bit of memory for themselves too. For example, most games split off a seperate thread for sound/music. This means that if a game is busy loading (or stalling), the music continues, regardless of what's happening with the rest of the game. The same thing happens with MMO games. Have you ever noticed when your internet connection stalls but everything in the game world keeps on rendering? That's because there are separate threads to handle rendering and internet stuff.

This is all well and good, but its a pain in the aft-end to debug. One thread by itself can be a lot of trouble to manage, and up until now, we've never used multiple threads in our projects. Introducing another thread into the mix is going to be like lighting both ends of a firework...

But you never know, it might go off without a bang.