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Author Topic:   Multiplayer enhancement request

Piglet posted 03-21-99 05:08 AM ET
I recently hosted my first IP MP game. Everyone was connected by modem at between 33K and 56K and the initial game synchronisation at launch was very slow (about 5 minutes). As we suffered dropped connections at regular intervals (usually due to the game crashing on someone when they discovered a new tech - which I think has been reported elsewhere). Each time this happened we had to save and relaunch - and therefore take the five minute wait again.
It seems to me that this process could readily be speeded up by keeping a cached game state on each machine and simply verifying (probably in partitioned sections) matches against a cached state history on the host (of the last few transmitted states) using checksums. This would allow the host to reliably identify the remote game state and transmit only the required updates...
tfs99 posted 03-22-99 03:52 PM ET
Something like this would be great.
It would also be nice if they would compress the data stream that they are sending.
Think about it, save game files ZIP down to about 27k bytes each. On a 56k bps connection running at 48k bps it would take around 6-10 seconds to send this file, depending on your connection quality.
But it takes about five minutes to synch up a 3P or 4P game!!
Spelled out:
1) 30 seconds (compressed .ZIP sent to 3 players besides host)
vs.
2) at least 300 seconds for how it is doing it now, and that is with good connections, sometimes it is even longer.
Combine this with caching the info with a checksum, tracking updates that have been applied and MP SMAC would be much more enjoyable.
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Author	Topic: Multiplayer enhancement request
Piglet	posted 03-21-99 05:08 AM ET I recently hosted my first IP MP game. Everyone was connected by modem at between 33K and 56K and the initial game synchronisation at launch was very slow (about 5 minutes). As we suffered dropped connections at regular intervals (usually due to the game crashing on someone when they discovered a new tech - which I think has been reported elsewhere). Each time this happened we had to save and relaunch - and therefore take the five minute wait again. It seems to me that this process could readily be speeded up by keeping a cached game state on each machine and simply verifying (probably in partitioned sections) matches against a cached state history on the host (of the last few transmitted states) using checksums. This would allow the host to reliably identify the remote game state and transmit only the required updates...
tfs99	posted 03-22-99 03:52 PM ET Something like this would be great. It would also be nice if they would compress the data stream that they are sending. Think about it, save game files ZIP down to about 27k bytes each. On a 56k bps connection running at 48k bps it would take around 6-10 seconds to send this file, depending on your connection quality. But it takes about five minutes to synch up a 3P or 4P game!! Spelled out: 1) 30 seconds (compressed .ZIP sent to 3 players besides host) vs. 2) at least 300 seconds for how it is doing it now, and that is with good connections, sometimes it is even longer. Combine this with caching the info with a checksum, tracking updates that have been applied and MP SMAC would be much more enjoyable.