This is the standard way of doing real-time networked multiplayer games, first pioneered by John Carmack in the Quakeworld codebase in 1996 > Instead of expect

This is the standard way of doing real-time networked multiplayer games, first pioneered by John Carmack in the Quakeworld codebase in 1996 > Instead of expecting everyone's messages to be dealt with at once, I now deal with each packet as it comes in. That player alone is moved forward in time, and a custom response is sent out in very short order. The rest of the objects in the world are spread out between the incoming packets. There are a lot of issues that that brings up. Time is no longer advancing uniformly for all objects in the world, which can cause a lot of problems. > It works, though! The average time from a packet ariving at the system to the time a response is sent back is down to under 4ms, as opposed to over 50 with the old dedicated servers. > Another side benefit is that the server never blindly sends packets out into the void, they must be specifically asked for (note that this is NOT a strict request/reply, because the client is streaming request without waiting for the replies). > I am going to be adding bandwidth estimation to help out modem links. If quake knows that a link is clogged up, it can choose not to send anything else, which is far, far better than letting the network buffer everything up or randomly drop packets. A dialup line can just say "never send more than 2000 bytes a second in datagrams", and while the update rate may drop in an overcommited situation, the latency will never pile up like it can with the current version of quake. > The biggest difference is the addition of client side movement simulation. > I am now allowing the client to guess at the results of the users movement until the authoritative response from the server comes through. This is a biiiig architectural change. The client now needs to know about solidity of objects, friction, gravity, etc. I am sad to see the elegent client-as-terminal setup go away, but I am practical above idealistic. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/master/by_day/johnc_plan_19960802.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-ar...