The Modem Lives On

Ant writes: "There's an interesting editorial currently running on 3dactionplanet which I agree with. Game developers and companies need to think about us people who can't get broadband connections! Yes, I am a part of the analog modemers. I can't play Q3A, HL, games, etc. very nicely due to my 28800 connections (even with 56K). No cable and DSL services here. Other options are just too expensive or won't work (i.e. satellite for online gaming?)"

Comments

Game Developers ARE optimizing for Modems

[The Optimizer]

As a programmer directly involved with a very popular online game, the Age of Empires series, I can tell you online gameplay with a modem connection is taken very, very seriously.

If fact... Two of our very brilliant communcations programmers, Mark Terrano and Paul Bettner are giving a presentation on this very subject at the international Game Developer's Conference next month in San Jose, CA. (Go to www.gdconf.com and check out their presentation "1600 Archers on a 28.8 modem" (Actually, I just checked the site and they don't appear to have the full schedule posted yet, and the author search just goes off into la-la land)

Anyway, the things we at Ensemble do to insure good modem play include:

* Having our 8-player dedicated testing area not only include a LAN connection, but modems on each computer. Modem based playtests are conducted using up to 8 different dial-up ISP's.

* Periodically auditing network communcations bandwidth usage over the course of an entire game to determine peak bandwidth requirments. Network packets are optimized for minimal size even before they are compressed. Our performance target is for comm usage not to ever exceed about 24K BPS of bandwidth in both directions.

* In our new 16-station playtest facility that is currently under construction, we will have a fancy phone line simulator device that allows for controlled degration of line conditions.

* Tuning the communications code to account for the types of pings geographically diverse modem users are likely to encounter. (our games can dynamically adjust the communications turn length to adapt to shifting pings).

* Showing each user, while they are playing the game, an indication of the communcation link performance to every other player. This allows people to quickly determine who is the person whose connection has just gone to crap.

* And we added in Age of Kings, the ability to save and restore a multiplayer game when someone gets disconnected or crashes.

I could go on, but I just wanted to get across that we do spend real effort on all applicable fronts to make as good an experience as possible for modem-users.

Now this is no indication of what other developers do, and other types of game may be more sensitive to ping than bandwidth.. etc.. etc.. As allways, Your mileage may vary.

-Mp

Re:geographic digital divide

[rabtech]

Actually, if the US government would axe the monopoly they have granted to today's communication companies, broadband would be much better off.

Out in front of my workplace runs a bunch of dark fibre. Southwestern Bell runs that fibre at about 10% capacity or less. We have another location across town. We would like to lease one of those dark fibre lines to connect us together. Will they let us? Nope. SWB won't let ANYONE, no matter how much money they offer, onto their fibre lines w/o going through their ancient frame-relay network, and they charge you an arm and a leg for it.

I know a guy who was working for a Houston company that is actually going to run new fibre lines on the telephone poles into EVERY home in that area. He worked measuring the distance between the poles so they would know how much cable to buy and plan for the installation.
The telcos and cable companies fought them TOOTH AND NAIL the ENTIRE WAY to stop this. Why? Because suddenly their government-granted monopoly went out the window.

There is another company in Dallas, featured here on slashdot a little while back, that is installing 100mbps links to various buildings around Dallas for like $1k per month, using fibre lines that they have laid underground.

It is high time compulsory sales of fibre lines is forced upon the telcos. If they won't bother to move, we should make them move. They are the problem. Bandwidth isn't scarce. There is no shortage of fibre or etherswitches. It is all an artificial constraint placed upon us because certain corporations are more concerned with an extra two cents per share than human progress. Same deal as oil companies: can they still make an insane profit if gas sells for $.80 per gallon? ABSOLUTELY. Why don't they? Because the CEO wants to line his pockets with another few million that he won't ever get to spend in his lifetime anyhow. That's why.

Capitalism isn't failing; our government has just herded us into a corporatist economy.
-
The IHA Forums

Start Your Own Service!

[Alien54]

This has been mentioned over the past month or so in exactly this of context. The original story I saw was in the Register here.

To Recap: The bottom line is that if you have a moderately large gaming club of 25 to 50 members, you can start your own ISP at a cost that compares to some hardware upgrades.

The town of Laramie, Wyoming, has done just this by setting up Lariat.net. Residents started the networking business in 1995 in an effort to bring everyone in the area online after various squabbles with the area's telephone company (now Qwest). The initial cost was around $3,000, with many residents donating their own PCs, according to Glass. Relevant equipment was stuck on private land, and copper wire was bought from Qwest for areas that couldn't get wireless.

The cost of the service is pretty good compared to what it would be otherwise. Individuals get a normal dial-up service for $5 a month, or $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). It is doing quite well thank you.

They want to clone this effort around the country, so you can contact them via this page. So get you buds together and put together a business plan. You might wind up with something you can have fun with!

Re:Broadband won't be utilised in games for years.

[general_re]

The European Union now has a bigger economy than the USA by a third

That's funny - according to my handy-dandy CIA World Factbook, in 1999 the aggregate GDP for the 15 member nations of the EU was about $8 trillion. And (drum roll, please), for the US, about $9.3 trillion. Now, we could examine the per capita GDP of both, but, if we note that the US has ~50 million fewer people than the EU, we can clearly see that such an examination would only make you look even worse. But then again, why let some inconvenient facts get in the way of an otherwise ill-considered pontification? ;)