[casual_games] casual multiplayer set up

[Gert-Jan Brok]

Hi Juan,
thanks for your tips.
Altough I don't quite agree with your last statement, that in a current 
scenario it wouldn't be an optimal experience. Years ago, in the modem 
age, I was playing Quake 2 and 3 online, and it worked perfectly on a 
Pentium 2 I believe. Sure, sometimes there where some hick-ups, but most 
of the time it ran smoothly. I am convinced that, even within a browser, 
we can recreate that experience nowadays when a very large community has 
a broadband connection and not too shabby systems. I think we've gotten 
too used to just using the standard tools and sollutions, and aren't 
looking much further. My opinion is that with optimization and some 
outside-the-box thinking we, as developers in general, can create 
experiences that will really create a WOW effect (not to be confused 
with the Vista wow effect, which isn't really a wow, but more of an ow.)

Well, enough ranting. Just wanted to express my opinion on that one. 
Nevertheless we are redesigning and tweaking our current project as we 
speak to get the desired "real-time" gameplay as a result.

Gert-Jan
Fantazm

Juan Gril wrote:

> I have two multiplayer games in production, and a third in the 

> prototype stage with my own backend. One thing I learned during the 

> process of developing them is that in order to have a compelling 

> casual multiplayer game for low processing scenarios (ie: inside 

> Flash) and low latency connections, keys are:

>

>     * It's more fun if everybody is doing things at the same time.

>       Turn based gaming was invented before computers ever existed, so

>       replicating it in the online world in most cases is just not

>       optimal.

>     * You should design your game so real-time updates are not

>       mandatory to keep the flow in the game. There are ways to fake a

>       real-time perception from the player, but it's all on how you

>       design the game.

>     * The game should be designed so every packet of data between

>       clients is very small and less often as possible. If your game

>       needs to send data for every player move (ie: FPS), you need to

>       go back to the drawing board, as it will never be an optimal

>       experience in the scenario (platform, players' computers and

>       configurations, etc.) you are working on.

>

> Cheers,

>

> Juan

>

> On 3/22/07, *Gert-Jan Brok* <cglist at fantazm.com 

> <mailto:cglist at fantazm.com>> wrote:

>

>     Hi Jonas,

>     thanks for your tips. We are having some challenges that are

>     somewhat familiar with those found in online FPS.

>     We have multiple players in one arena, with position updates and

>     collision detection between players.

>     I'll send you some details privately.

>

>     Gert-Jan

>     Fantazm

>

>     Jónas Björgvin Antonsson wrote:

>>     It's a delicate balance between Push/Pull, sync and async data transfer along with the data format, what to send and when. Try to limit the amount of data that you need to transfer and when you transfer it. Also try to put desicion makers in the game that allow you to only push data to relevant clients at each time.

>>

>>      

>>     Depending on your design, Smart Fox might be an overkill. If you're making a small 2player game it might be wiser to just pull everything and use either web services or html sync. You just need to know that there are security implications involved with both methods.

>>

>>      

>>     Based on your generic question these are my generic answers. You can contact me correctly if you want to get into details.

>>      

>>     J#

>>

>>     jonas at gogogic.com <mailto:jonas at gogogic.com>

>>     www.gogogic.com <http://www.gogogic.com> 

>>

>>     ________________________________

>>

>>     From: 

>>     casual_games-bounces at igda.org <mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org> on behalf of Gert-Jan Brok

>>     Sent: mið. 21.3.2007 15:42

>>     To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List

>>     Subject: [casual_games] casual multiplayer set up

>>

>>

>>     This is more of a technical question, but we are in the progress of creating a multiplayer casual game, that runs within the browser.

>>

>>     I was wondering if anyone on the list can give me some information/guidelines for best practices on building real-time multiplayer games that run inside the browser i.e. with Flash.

>>     We are working with SmartFoxServer at the moment which seems to be a solid platform with good performance.

>>

>>

>>     A more concrete question is when we should perform syncing between clients from the server, and when should we sync from a client host (through the server)? Or are there better solutions for syncing clients with eachother?

>>

>>

>>     Gert-Jan

>>     Fantazm

>>

>>

>>       

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