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Multiplayer Online Games over Scale-Free Networks: a Viable Solution?
- PROCEEDINGS OF 1TH ICST/CREATE-NET WORKSHOP ON DISTRIBUTED SIMULATION AND ONLINE GAMING (DISIO 2010)
, 2010
"... In this paper we discuss the viability of deploying Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) over scale-free networks. We employ a general peer-to-peer overlay network; nodes have a number of neighbors which follows a power law distribution, pk ∼ k −α, the usual degree distribution that characterizes scale-f ..."
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In this paper we discuss the viability of deploying Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) over scale-free networks. We employ a general peer-to-peer overlay network; nodes have a number of neighbors which follows a power law distribution, pk ∼ k −α, the usual degree distribution that characterizes scale-free nets. Game events generated by nodes during the game evolution are disseminated through the network, based on some (push) gossip protocols run over the created overlay. We experiment with different gossip protocols. Results demonstrate that the employed gossip protocol may greatly influence the ability of disseminating the game data through the scale-free network. In particular, when gossip is performed using a small dissemination probability, a nonnegligible percentage of the network is not able to receive the message. This implies that not all players might be able to perceive the game event. Hence, parameters of gossip protocols must be properly tuned to guarantee a full network coverage. Concurrently, it is shown that, due to their low diameter, the use of scale-free networks allows to disseminate game events in very few steps. This could ensure a high level of responsiveness on the dissemination of game events, which is the main objective to pursue when dealing with MOGs.
A Protocol for Distributed Collision Detection
"... Abstract—Scalability of multiplayer games can be improved by client-side processing of game actions. Consistency becomes a concern, however, in the case of unpredictable but impor-tant events such as object interactions. We propose here a new motion-lock protocol for distributed collision detection ..."
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Abstract—Scalability of multiplayer games can be improved by client-side processing of game actions. Consistency becomes a concern, however, in the case of unpredictable but impor-tant events such as object interactions. We propose here a new motion-lock protocol for distributed collision detection and resolution. The motion-lock protocol improves performance of motion prediction by giving stations time to communicate and agree on the detected collisions. This reduces the divergence of distributed object states and post-collision trajectories. Offline and online simulation results show the motion-lock protocol re-sults in qualitative and quantitative improvements to consistency, with negligible network impact and a minimal sacrifice in the responsiveness of player controls. Our design can be used to hide latency and reduce server load in current multiplayer online games, improving scalability and furthering fully distributed designs. I.
QuON – a Quad-Tree Based Overlay Protocol for Distributed Virtual Worlds
"... Worlds are among the most popular applications on the Internet. As player numbers increase, the limits of the currently dominant client/server architecture are becoming obvious. In this paper we propose a new distributed event dissemination protocol for Virtual Worlds and MMOGs. This protocol is bas ..."
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Worlds are among the most popular applications on the Internet. As player numbers increase, the limits of the currently dominant client/server architecture are becoming obvious. In this paper we propose a new distributed event dissemination protocol for Virtual Worlds and MMOGs. This protocol is based upon the idea of mutual notification: All players send their game event messages directly to all neighboring players inside their Area of Interest. The connectedness of the system is ensured by binding neighbors. They are selected using quad-trees. We show by simulation that the proposed system achieves practical performance for Virtual Worlds and Massively Multiplayer Online Games.
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, 2014
"... Virtual worlds and massive multiplayer online games are amongst the most popular applications on the Internet. In order to host these applications a reliable architecture is required. It is essential for the architecture to handle high user loads, maintain a complex game state, promptly respond to g ..."
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Virtual worlds and massive multiplayer online games are amongst the most popular applications on the Internet. In order to host these applications a reliable architecture is required. It is essential for the architecture to handle high user loads, maintain a complex game state, promptly respond to game inter-actions, and prevent cheating, amongst other properties. Many of today’s Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) use client-server architectures to provide multiplayer service. Clients (players) send their actions to a server. The latter calculates the game state and publishes the information to the clients. Although the client-server architecture has been widely adopted in the past for MMOG, it suffers from many limitations. First, applications based on a client-server architecture are difficult to support and maintain given the dynamic user base of online games. Such architectures do not easily scale (or handle heavy loads). Also, the server constitutes a single point of failure. We argue that peer-to-peer architec-tures can provide better support for MMOG. Peer-to-peer architectures can enable the user base to scale to a large number. They also limit disruptions experienced by players due to other nodes failing. This research designs and implements a peer-to-peer architecture for MMOG. The peer-to-peer ar-chitecture aims at reducing message latency over the network and on the application layer. We refine the communication between nodes in the architecture to reduce network latency by using SPDY, a protocol designed to reduce web page load time. For the application layer, an event-driven paradigm was used to process messages. Through user load simulation, we show that our peer-to-peer design is able to process and reliably deliver messages in a timely manner. Furthermore, by distributing the work conducted by a game server, our research shows that a peer-to-peer architecture responds quicker to requests compared to client-server models.
Group Movement in World of Warcraft Battlegrounds
"... Abstract Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) topology management and message propagation schemes have been proposed for many years. Evaluating DVE message propagation schemes requires a variety of assumptions whose verity significantly affects results, such as details about avatar movement charac ..."
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Abstract Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) topology management and message propagation schemes have been proposed for many years. Evaluating DVE message propagation schemes requires a variety of assumptions whose verity significantly affects results, such as details about avatar movement characteristics. We implemented two schemes for waypoint and hotspot detection, and examined their applicability for characterizing avatar movement. We confirmed that waypoint detection doesn't yield good results for characterizing human avatar movement, and gained new insight into why by rendering avatar movement as point clouds. We implemented an existing hotspot detection model, and proposed an enhancement to help overcome one limitation of cell-based hotspot detection. We were able to immediately apply this hotspot detection technique to help analyze group movement. We discovered that although a third of movement time in the battlegrounds is spent in inter-node journeys, less than a quarter of these journeys are made in groups.
Minimum-Delay Overlay Multicast 1
"... Delivering delay-sensitive data to a group of receivers with minimum latency is a fundamental problem for various applications. In this paper, we study multicast routing with minimum end-to-end delay to the receivers. The delay to each receiver in a multicast tree consist of the time that the data s ..."
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Delivering delay-sensitive data to a group of receivers with minimum latency is a fundamental problem for various applications. In this paper, we study multicast routing with minimum end-to-end delay to the receivers. The delay to each receiver in a multicast tree consist of the time that the data spends in overlay links as well as the latency incurred at each overlay node, which has to send out a piece of data several times over a finite-capacity network connection. The latter portion of the delay, which is proportional to the degree of nodes in the tree, can be a significant portion of the total delay as we show in the paper. Yet, it is often ignored or only partially addressed by previous multicast algorithms. We formulate the actual delay to the receivers in a multicast tree and consider minimizing the average and the maximum delay in the tree. We show the NP-hardness of these problems and prove that they cannot be approximated in polynomial time to within any reasonable approximation ratio. We then propose a number of efficient algorithms that heuristically build a multicast tree in which the average or the maximum delay is minimized. These algorithms together cover a wide range of overlay sizes and both versions of our problem. The effectiveness of our algorithms is demonstrated through comprehensive experiments on different real-world datasets and using various overlay network models. The results confirm that our algorithms can achieve much lower delays (up to 60 % less) and up to orders of magnitude faster running times (hence supporting larger scales) than previous minimum-delay multicast approaches. I.
Survey of P2P Game
"... Abstract—Millions of players play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) daily. Because the cost and limited scalability of client/server architecture of today’s MMOG; Peerto-Peer (P2P) architectures become very popular in MMOG recently, many researches are conducted in this field. This paper pre ..."
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Abstract—Millions of players play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) daily. Because the cost and limited scalability of client/server architecture of today’s MMOG; Peerto-Peer (P2P) architectures become very popular in MMOG recently, many researches are conducted in this field. This paper presents a survey of recent advancements in P2P game regarding with its state management, overlay management and security. I.
– Performance attributes.
"... Evaluating DVE topology management and message propagation schemes requires avatar movement models. Most models are based on reasoned assumptions rather than measured data, potentially biasing evaluation. We measured player movement in World of Warcraft battlegrounds, and compared our observations a ..."
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Evaluating DVE topology management and message propagation schemes requires avatar movement models. Most models are based on reasoned assumptions rather than measured data, potentially biasing evaluation. We measured player movement in World of Warcraft battlegrounds, and compared our observations against common assumptions about player avatar movement and navigation. We found that when modeling a highly interactive DVE such as a battleground, a waypoint model is not sufficient to describe most avatar movement. We were surprised to find that despite game incentives for grouping, the majority of avatar movement between objectives is individual, not grouped. Finally, we found that a hotspot-based model for avatar movement is consistent with our traces.
