4 ms·
Definitely, but other methods, such as lockstep, are also used in some games.
by zacmps 9y ago
Definitely, but other methods, such as lockstep, are also used in some games.
- dfox 9y agoThat depends on the kind of game, mainly on whether it is practical to replicate whole state relevant to player at least occasionally and whether the latency of lock step is acceptable. For RTSes the whole game state is usually impractically large and latency is not that important (and can be masked) while for shooters the state is relatively small and latency is critical.
- animal531 9y agoJust a side note; what you're saying is true (as in RTS vs FPS) if in general if I'm just attack moving my army into yours and then ignoring it. But if I'm micro-ing for example my single marine vs your single zergling then latency is just as important as in any FPS. The interesting part with RTS for me is that a person can only control so many entities, so only 'touched' entities need real-time syncing, if its for example off-screen a server simulation can just tell you the results afterward. I quite enjoyed this classic old article (1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond): http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_on...
- dfox 9y agoIn RTS you can get away with latency between player input and the thing actually happening on the order of 100-200ms with visual tricks and thus serializing all the player inputs and replicating only that to independent simulations for each player running in lockstep is viable. You can't do that for games which need faster simulation updates than network round-trip.