Also, sending of entity updates only to close clients is certainly nice but I cant imagine that this prevents you from doing a MMOG either.
This is not just "nice" for MMP, but "necessary" and native GS's inability to deal with this to date is very much preventing ANYONE from creating a MMOG.
If you can't see why, then please, respectfully, as someone who admits to not having much working experience with MP, please stay clear of this conversation.
As I said handles are nothing but long integers,
Under Lite-C this is true. But for those of us that have developed under C-Script (still supported by Conitec last time I checked), handles are Vars and Vars do not "export" well.
but if this handle stuff is one of the things that prevent you from doing a multiplayer game,
Please read the entire thread before commenting as there are a TON of other issues (most listed above) that affect the ability to achieve a native GS MMOG of which the handle is but one and not even the most important one.
