on the effects of loose causal consistency in mobile multiplayer games
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.
mobile multiplayer gaming real-time latency wireless consistency management collaborative peer to peer relevance filtering