Consistency in Multiplayer Online Game in Continuous Domain

Abstract

This paper describes the ways to maintain the consistency in Multiplayer Online Games (MPOGs) in continuous domain. The involvement of computer networking, computer graphics, multimedia, artificial intelligence makes the MPOG environment more complex. As a result, consistency, responsiveness, scalability, fairness and avoiding cheating are examples for available issues in MPOG environment. The consistency is well discussed in the discrete domain, however the attention on consistency of MPOGs in continuous domain is poor and data centric approaches are not adequate for MPOGs due to the game state changes with passing time. Further, the consistency and responsiveness are two important considerations in the MPOG environment, however both cannot be achieved at once. As a result, the different architectures are available to implement game environment, and those are supported by latency handling techniques; time delay, local lag, time wrap, progressive slow down, dead reckoning, gossiping, PREMUB for example. The examples are discussed under each architecture for a better understanding of criticising the architecture. This paper mainly delivers the importance of consistency in MPOG, however it sacrifices the responsiveness in MPOG, as a result both aspects must be considered equally important for Quality of Experience (QoE) of the player.