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On the effects of loose causal consistency in mobile multiplayer games

Published: 10 October 2005 Publication History

Abstract

It is well understood that distributed multiplayer games, as soft real-time systems, require a degree of support from the underlying network in order to function correctly, in terms of predictable end to end bandwidth, latency and jitter. In a mobile environment, such applications face even greater challenges, as the latency of wireless networks is much higher than their wireline counterparts, jitter is often much higher due to network handoff and bandwidth is at a premium. In fact, the latency of many wide area wireless networks is beyond the tolerance of most multiplayer games, rendering such applications unusable.This paper presents the design and experimental evaluation of Rendezvous, a novel decentralized consistency management mechanism that enables the collaboration of multiple players in mobile real-time games, even in a high latency environment. The operation of the mechanism is validated through the analysis of a real world example - a distributed mobile multiplayer soccer game called Knockabout, which is designed to operate on the Smartphone platform. Experimental results are included not only comparing Rendezvous to an existing consistency mechanism, but also measuring the length of network delay tolerated by the platform and its effect on the players.

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  1. On the effects of loose causal consistency in mobile multiplayer games

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    NetGames '05: Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
    October 2005
    164 pages
    ISBN:1595931562
    DOI:10.1145/1103599
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 10 October 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. collaborative
    2. consistency management
    3. gaming
    4. latency
    5. mobile
    6. multiplayer
    7. peer to peer
    8. real-time
    9. relevance filtering
    10. wireless

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    • (2014)Reducing the negative effects of inconsistencies in networked gamesProceedings of the first ACM SIGCHI annual symposium on Computer-human interaction in play10.1145/2658537.2658539(237-246)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2014
    • (2014)The effects of consistency maintenance methods on player experience and performance in networked gamesProceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing10.1145/2531602.2531616(1344-1355)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2014
    • (2013)Peer-to-peer architectures for massively multiplayer online gamesACM Computing Surveys10.1145/2522968.252297746:1(1-51)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2013
    • (2012)A Survey of State Persistency in Peer-to-Peer Massively Multiplayer Online GamesIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2011.21023:5(818-834)Online publication date: 1-May-2012
    • (2011)Effects of packetization delay on multiplayer gaming experience over ad hoc networks2011 IFIP Wireless Days (WD)10.1109/WD.2011.6098224(1-6)Online publication date: Oct-2011
    • (2010)Delay Characteristics and Server Update Optimization of Multiplayer Gaming in Mobile Environment2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications10.1109/ICC.2010.5502623(1-6)Online publication date: May-2010
    • (2008)The playing sessionInternational Journal of Computer Games Technology10.5555/1463033.14536752008(1-9)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2008
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    • (2008)Persistence in massively multiplayer online gamesProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Network and System Support for Games10.1145/1517494.1517505(53-58)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2008
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