5 ms·

Inter-planetary internet... How do you play a game when few of the players are on Mars?

by emteycz 5y ago

hatware 5y ago
Ping of 30 minutes
- emteycz 5y ago
  Turn-based strategies.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Yep. 30 minutes is super-fast compared to play-by-mail! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game
czbond 5y ago
entangled quantum pairs?
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  You can't send information with quantum entanglement. This is one of the no-go theorems of quantum information: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem>
  - intrasight 5y ago
    True. But I think you can at least sync clocks. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41534-018-0090-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41534-018-0090-2
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    But you can not send information. Which is information that you didn’t send. Thus, you sent information. This is like saying you can’t send information with electricity. You couldn’t at first (FYI), but then someone invented Morse code and the absence and non-absence of electricity made all the difference in the world.
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      You can send information by sending additional information through classical means (thus limited to relativity). This is the basis for quantum cryptography, where you can have a shared one-time pad that is impossible to intercept without detection or and impossible to copy (thanks to the no-cloning and no-teleportation theorems). But you can't send information through quantum entanglement itself without rewriting a significant chunk of physics as we know it. If you're going to do that, all bets are off and you should be consulting with wizards and not physicists.
iamstupidsimple 5y ago
Even with high ping, application layer is probably the wrong place to solve this problem. We'll likely get email working as one of the first problems and be back to correspondence chess and the like. Even Civilization 5/6 works over email.
- imtringued 5y ago
  https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/8111/how-do-you-play-civilization-v-by-e-mail https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/8111/how-do-you-p... Apparently people mail each other save games.
- 0xCMP 5y ago
  TIL that Civ IV has "Play by Cloud" which automates all of this + supports webhooks to notify you when it's your turn.
wmf 5y ago
Some progress has been made on this; see http://bundleprotocol.com/ http://bundleprotocol.com/
tjpnz 5y ago
How do you even reconcile time between locations that far apart? Syncing your system clock with an off-planet NTP server will be.. problematic.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  This is actually a totally solved problem using a solar reference frame and done every day for missions far out in space. NASA has a free tool[0] to see the current time for any body on earth, even correcting for light-delay. It works via email, ftp, telnet, and web. 0: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/ https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/

Inter-planetary internet... How do you play a game when few of the players are on Mars?

hatware 5y ago

Ping of 30 minutes

emteycz 5y ago
Turn-based strategies.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Yep. 30 minutes is super-fast compared to play-by-mail! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game

czbond 5y ago

entangled quantum pairs?

marginalia_nu 5y ago
You can't send information with quantum entanglement. This is one of the no-go theorems of quantum information: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem>
- intrasight 5y ago
  True. But I think you can at least sync clocks. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41534-018-0090-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41534-018-0090-2
- withinboredom 5y ago
  But you can not send information. Which is information that you didn’t send. Thus, you sent information. This is like saying you can’t send information with electricity. You couldn’t at first (FYI), but then someone invented Morse code and the absence and non-absence of electricity made all the difference in the world.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    You can send information by sending additional information through classical means (thus limited to relativity). This is the basis for quantum cryptography, where you can have a shared one-time pad that is impossible to intercept without detection or and impossible to copy (thanks to the no-cloning and no-teleportation theorems). But you can't send information through quantum entanglement itself without rewriting a significant chunk of physics as we know it. If you're going to do that, all bets are off and you should be consulting with wizards and not physicists.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago

Even with high ping, application layer is probably the wrong place to solve this problem. We'll likely get email working as one of the first problems and be back to correspondence chess and the like. Even Civilization 5/6 works over email.

imtringued 5y ago
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/8111/how-do-you-play-civilization-v-by-e-mail https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/8111/how-do-you-p... Apparently people mail each other save games.
0xCMP 5y ago
TIL that Civ IV has "Play by Cloud" which automates all of this + supports webhooks to notify you when it's your turn.

wmf 5y ago

Some progress has been made on this; see http://bundleprotocol.com/ http://bundleprotocol.com/

tjpnz 5y ago

How do you even reconcile time between locations that far apart? Syncing your system clock with an off-planet NTP server will be.. problematic.

withinboredom 5y ago
This is actually a totally solved problem using a solar reference frame and done every day for missions far out in space. NASA has a free tool[0] to see the current time for any body on earth, even correcting for light-delay. It works via email, ftp, telnet, and web. 0: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/ https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/