Posted by
timothy
on from the please-give-me-a-driving-simulator dept.
PokeBlor writes: "Arena.net has an article by Patrick Wyatt, a Blizzard ex, that goes into depth about the creation of multiplayer games, ranging from replayability to lag. He uses good examples from Starcraft and Warcraft 2, two games that Wyatt was a designer on."
I find that todays game players are spoiled and demand more and more from a game in both graphics and robustness.
You can always judge the quality of a game player by asking if they have ever used a MUD. I honestly think this is a genres of Multiplayer gaming which has been tossed to the wayside by 13 year olds who have never heard of a BBS and want to push the limits of their new GeForce4 as to show off to their friends.
Talk about robustness, anyone who can remember MajorMUD or Tele-Arena know what I'm talking about.
I just honestly think game makers need to look back and reignite the Text Based RPG craze. I honestly feel there's money to be made in it.
Only reason text based was popular was because there wasn't enough horse power for graphics. It was the quality of the game that made it poular. There were probably a few bad text based games. Just like today's graphically rich games. There are good and bad, just like in all products. Text based isn't better than graphics. And what's wrong with trying to see what your new $300 video card is capable of? Some of us can't wait for the day when game graphics will be indistinguishable from real life.
Re:My comment..
by
WndrBr3d
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Many of todays game makers have tried to pack the robustness of old Text Based games into a graphcial interface but they're failed miserably. There's only so much you can do with the mouse.
Give me text commands anyday.
Re:Avoid lag?!
by
Telastyn
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I wouldn't say suck really. They're just overutilized. I'd also assume they come under attack fairly often.
When you get a few hundred thousand users on a server it's going to slow down, no matter the code or connection... While 3rd party server apps might be faster for small groups, I doubt they will be as fast as the 'official' server on compriable equipment with a few hundred thousand users. And if it is faster, I'd be suspicious about what features/preventative measures were not included to get the speed gains.
Multiplayer Games Overrated?
by
slipkid
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This article should be mandatory reading for game designers everywhere. It seems that more and more games are coming out with gratuitous multiplayer functionality just to sell copies. The criteria in this article should be a pre-release checklist for any game including a multiplayer option.
There are certain games whose genre or interface makes multiplayer functionality completely cumbersome to the point of being unplayable. The Baldur's Gate series comes to mind as beautiful single-player games with horribly implemented multiplayer modes... IMO of course.
I'm a fan of multiplayer when multiplayer works, but I won't be a party to Monkey Island on Kali.
I don't think this is off topic (maybe a little). In some games you are somewhat free to build a personality with skins and so on. I hope this will evolve because I think that it is a nice feature. I found a protocol that delivers many 3D features in a compact way. The protocol has a design that enables loading up objects with shape and behavior.
The protocol is called Verse and is a network protocol, for three-dimensional, client/server graphic - Quote: "A typical way to communicate in Verse is to let clients upload or use existing objects as avatars, and then communicate by moving and animating these avatar objects".
Unit VS Race Balancing
by
Guru1
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It wasn't until we changed from Warcraft's "unit equivalence" to StarCraft's "race equivalence" that we were able to correct the most egregious play imbalance issues.
I find this to be a very important statement he made in regards to the development of multiplayer and RTS games. After warcraft, the piles of RTS games that came out all had some thing in common. A few races (or civs, etc) that had different units that all did basically the same thing.. the "ranged unit" the "fast unit" the "strong unit that is really expensive", etc. Other than some small games that didn't really make it off the ground, Starcraft was the first mainstream game that said "this race can do this and this other race is completely different". I believe that Starcraft is replayed so often because there is an incredible amount of flexability with each race and when combined with fighting against another diverse race, it creates an incredible amount of possibilities.
What makes this a great money maker for games such as Diablo and Starcraft (if they'd get off their buttocks), is that they can reuse the same engine they already had written, code in another race (or couple classes as in Diablo II LoD), and have people scrambling to buy it, since it adds an exponential amount of excitement to the game. If Starcraft added one single race (sold at the price of $25 in stores), I would instantly buy it.. not only would I be able to learn all about the new "Dotslash" race, but I would be able to figure out piles of strategies about how to fight Dotslashes with Terrans, or Protoss.. Just as the message boards are filled with people asking how to fight Druids with Necromancers, etc etc.
The game industry needs to focus more on additions to their games, instead of starting from scratch every single time. Not only would the players be happier, but I imagine the pocketbooks of the game makers would be happy as well.
Dave
Sorry, I don't buy it.
by
No+Such+Agency
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Don't be a MUD snob. I know it's difficult, we are all snobs about something, but it's not a 13 year old's fault if they haven't played some ancient text game that you liked so much. Hell, I've never played a MUD (I'm 27yo), though I've heard some were *great*. But they weren't necessarily good because they didn't rely on graphics. They were good, because like some cutting edge 3D games, they were designed and coded with care and concern for gameplay.
Seems to me you're blaming the developers for what the legal department and the marketing folks are doing. How many Blizzard designers do you think really care which network the gamers use, as long as they play the game?
The idea behind setting up a game and giving it rules to create an artificial constraint that everyone agrees to work within. The important part is that agreement. Sure, you can technologically bend and break the rules, but that doesn't make it right. The idea is to level the field somewhat and then make it a battle of skill and wits WITHIN the constraints of the game.
The big problem with cheating is identification. If you want to go out and duel against other bot builders then it's a fair competition. Other people are out there trying to move and react as quickly as they can but within the rules. If you present yourself as one of those people (the "nearly undetectable" comment) then you should play within those rules.
So, I'm glad that you get a huge power kick out of being able to dupe people trying to play within the bounds, but you've completely missed the point. Note: The Matrix is a horrible example to justify your actions. The Matrix is about revolution and fighting tyranny, not getting the highest number of frags.
-- ---
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Unsupported Browser?
by
evand
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Seeing as my using OmniWeb to view arena.net resulted in a quick glance at the requested page (which looked fine) and then a bounce to ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Browser, I thought I'd respond in kind (note: I didn't actually send HTML email; I had to replace some of the hyphen characters with just bolding the topics so that I wouldn't get blocked by the lameness filter):
To: webmaster@arena.net
Subject: ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Webmaster
Why am I getting this instead of a friendly, congratulatory email?
You are here because the webmaster you are using is apparently too lazy to create pages that work in most browsers, regardless of their support for the full HTML 4.0 specification, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Most likely, you're losing a decent hunk of viewers because of this.
Why does that matter?
In the pursuit of giving web surfers the kind of experience that you want them to have, as opposed to simply letting them control the experience for themselves (as would tend to be suggested by the HTML and CSS standards), you tried to use the best technology available, which I heartily commend. HTML 4.0 and CSS are examples of some of the best and most widespread standards-based technology available for presenting interactive media to the world. However, you have decided that, rather than simply using these technologies and letting the user decide if and how to implement them on the client-side, your webserver will detect browsers that you haven't tested with and will send the user of said browser to a completely useless page rather than actually delivering the content that the user requested.
What should I do?
If your webmaster can't figure out how to get pages to display at all in browsers other than those created by Netscape and Microsoft, you might want to hire a better one.
If you are running a smart webmaster who has simply gone astray from the vision of the web, you will want to either ask them to change their policies or follow the advice above.
Aggressive play
by
Broccolist
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That was a bit of a disappointing article. I was expecting some major insights from a developer of such great games, but he mostly just reiterated banalities that any long-time gamer is aware of.
But I would add one more crucial point: gameplay should be fast-paced and aggressive. Sitting in your base and defending against unsuccessful attacks is just boring. In Warcraft 2, defending almost never worked and attacking was always to your benefit. The result was an edge-of-your-seat game where, among skilled players, every unit you pumped out was immediately sent to the battlefield and you were constantly trying to stop one of your bases from being trashed. I have yet to see an RTS which, all balance issues aside, is just plain more exciting than a good game of multiplayer War2. This is why I continue to consider it the greatest RTS ever made.
But Blizzard seems to have lost sight of this in later games. In Starcraft, sitting in your base and defending actually works, which makes for terribly boring games. Am I the only one who finds that games after Quake 1/Warcraft 2 have subtly become more and more slow-paced and boring?
Frankly, I would object to the "balance" business, which seems to be taken for granted by all game developers nowadays. Of course, games should be mostly balanced, but saying that ideally a game should be 100% balanced is going too far. A bit of imbalance serves to focalize the players' energies. E.g., in the original Quake, the most important thing was to control the rocket launcher and red armor, and this made for exciting games where players desperately vied for control of the key resources. In later Quakes, you can just pick up any weapon, since they're all just as good.
In sum, I don't think "balance" is the holy grail modern developers make it out to be. IMHO, the attitude of "balance above all" epitomizes all that's wrong with modern games. If a bit of imbalance is necessary to make a game that's more aggressive, fast-paced and fun, I say game developers shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice the principle.
Re:Aggressive play
by
o6dukeleto
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In response to Balance:
I would say the importance of play balance is directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to play a different side effectivly.
In the case of FPS such as CS, a little imbalance is probably ok. As all I have to do, is switch sides. Some people even like to play the underdog.
In the case of most MMORPGs, I would say imbalance can cause a lot of problems. The reason for this is that people spend hours, days, months, years on particalar characters, and to play another character takes a hugh investment. Therefore people will become disenchanted because of the time investment.
Importance of balance is directly proportional to the time required to play a different side.
He missed the biggest problem of all...
by
EricLivingston
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I find I have zero interest in MMO games. I diddled around in EQ when it first came out, and UO when it first came out, and cancelled both quickly. I've since realized that the key problem I had with both games is an inherent problem in all MMO games: You're just a small cog in a huge machine, with no compelling reason to exist in the world.
After running around killing bats for a while in EQ this realization hit me - my character could come, go, exist, or not and nothing really changes in the world. It just doesn't matter. This is by necessity - the game cannot make anything pivotal happen based on my character, 'cause it can't assume I'll be around or even that I'll exist (as a player).
So, what you wind up with is a bunch of folks running around killing things and so on, but really to no purpose at all ultimately.
yeah, you can gain levels and become some 50th level powerhouse, but who cares? There are hundreds of others just like you. You might even go out with some buddies and kill some big thing like a dragon or whatnot, but who cares? It'll just respawn in a while anyway. The world is essentially unchanged. It just winds up feeling so pointless.
I guess I've just been bred on single-person games that make you feel like you're truly at the center of the universe (such as Deus Ex, where you literally save reality). Even Half-life, which arguably has a lot going on besides your own sorry butt's survival, makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action all the time. I guess I'm just spoiled that way.
I find in the MMO games I'm just wandering around in a very static world wondering what vermin to kill next or whatever - it's all quite boring really. I suppose guilds might help to some extent, in that they present a nice social environment of bonding, etc, but you really just click the futility up a notch: instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I've read that games like DAOC have a multi-year storyline that will play out some kind of plot, but again, I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
Re:He missed the biggest problem of all...
by
ellem
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
the key problem I had with both games is an inherent problem in all MMO games: You're just a small cog in a huge machine, with no compelling reason to exist in the world.
instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
eeriely like real life, huh?
-- This.sig is fake but accurate.
Re:Even the basics are hard
by
Zathrus
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You're still not making sense. In fact, less sense than you were originally.
First you say not to "rely on the existing network code", and then you talk about creating "highly-optimized [...] UDP-based solutions". What do you think UDP is? It's existing network code. The only magic being perfomed is the data inside of the packets. Everything else - from the trivial handshaking to the deeply important things like encoding, transport, routing, etc. utilize existing code. What the previous poster was saying is that you are asking them to rewrite THAT code, and that is outright absurd. Go ahead and do so, but if you expect people to actually use it beyond a home LAN then they're going to stuff it into a TCP/IP packet which is not only going to undo any magic you may've done, but add additional overhead on top of it.
To go back to your original complaint, if you'd like to see how things work without having everyone using prediction, just turn it off. You can you know (and sorry, I'm not enough of a Quakehead anymore to recall the correct variable). Welcome to hell. There's a reason that id, Epic, and everyone else has started using player prediction on both the servers and the clients. Without it you're limited to the lowest common denominator for network traffic. Think back to Doom and how much it sucked when someone with a shitty computer or ethernet drivers connected to the game.
The key to player prediction is the right balance. Too much prediction and you get a lot of silly things like modem players shooting people on OC-3's after they're down the hall and around 3 corners. Too little and you make it unusable for anyone not on an OC-3.
Once [bnetd allowed Warcraft II beta], I think they just drew the line.
Yes, but (a) bnetd and FSGS didn't allow cracking; and (b) Blizzard doesn't have a legal leg to stand on anyway. These programs reverse engineering and reimplement Blizzard's protocol, which is perfectly legal. It was someone else who created the Warcraft hacking patch, and as I understand it neither bnetd nor FSGS directly linked to said patches. If anything, it was sites providing those patches that should have been pursued.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I don't think it's fair to allow the computer to "judge" modem players' moves, and try to determine "if" the player would have got the hit. Not only is this unfair to the player (when they get to a real LAN tournament they'll be roasted), it's also unfair to the vet with a decent connection, because the newbie in essense gets a free hit. I would propose figuring out better ways to communicate over the network instead of trying to second guess the players' moves with algorhythms.
If my connection to a game is rotten, there's nothing the game client or the game server can do about it.
If you're only getting 4 updates a second from the server, your client *has* to guess what the other players are doing until the server tells it what really happens, because the alternative is to have a 4 FPS update.
Likewise, if the server only gets 4 updates per second from your client, it *has* to guess what you want to do, because it can't read your mind. Most servers guess that you'll keep holding down the keys that you were holding when it last heard from you, which is a tolerable solution. What would you prefer them to do?
The networking code in most games is already as good as it can be. The interpolation code tends to vary from game to game, but the effects are usually the same.
First of all, wrt the Ultima series, are you sure it was the good graphics that ruined it? After all, very few series stay good over long periods of time, they have a tendancy to get worse with each successive game/movie/book/whatever. There are notable exceptions, but claiming that Ultima XXII would kick ass today if they had just kept making games for the C64 seems pretty silly.
The point of game graphics indistinguishable from real life is to make your escape from reality more complete. Just because it LOOKS like real life doesn't mean it has to PLAY like real life. Just look at ID Software's games (from Wolf 3D to Q3A) for an example of games that have gotten progressively more realistic looking without becoming anything more like real life.
-- "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Re:He has a point
by
j7953
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The primary things done by cheats (looking through walls, etc) are things that the game does not prevent.
So what? A chess board also doesn't prevent you from moving the pawns sideways.
-- Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Slashdot Mirror
I find that todays game players are spoiled and demand more and more from a game in both graphics and robustness.
You can always judge the quality of a game player by asking if they have ever used a MUD. I honestly think this is a genres of Multiplayer gaming which has been tossed to the wayside by 13 year olds who have never heard of a BBS and want to push the limits of their new GeForce4 as to show off to their friends.
Talk about robustness, anyone who can remember MajorMUD or Tele-Arena know what I'm talking about.
I just honestly think game makers need to look back and reignite the Text Based RPG craze. I honestly feel there's money to be made in it.
I wouldn't say suck really. They're just overutilized. I'd also assume they come under attack fairly often.
When you get a few hundred thousand users on a server it's going to slow down, no matter the code or connection... While 3rd party server apps might be faster for small groups, I doubt they will be as fast as the 'official' server on compriable equipment with a few hundred thousand users. And if it is faster, I'd be suspicious about what features/preventative measures were not included to get the speed gains.
This article should be mandatory reading for game designers everywhere. It seems that more and more games are coming out with gratuitous multiplayer functionality just to sell copies. The criteria in this article should be a pre-release checklist for any game including a multiplayer option.
There are certain games whose genre or interface makes multiplayer functionality completely cumbersome to the point of being unplayable. The Baldur's Gate series comes to mind as beautiful single-player games with horribly implemented multiplayer modes... IMO of course.
I'm a fan of multiplayer when multiplayer works, but I won't be a party to Monkey Island on Kali.
I don't think this is off topic (maybe a little). In some games you are somewhat free to build a personality with skins and so on. I hope this will evolve because I think that it is a nice feature. I found a protocol that delivers many 3D features in a compact way. The protocol has a design that enables loading up objects with shape and behavior.
The protocol is called Verse and is a network protocol, for three-dimensional, client/server graphic - Quote: "A typical way to communicate in Verse is to let clients upload or use existing objects as avatars, and then communicate by moving and animating these avatar objects".
It wasn't until we changed from Warcraft's "unit equivalence" to StarCraft's "race equivalence" that we were able to correct the most egregious play imbalance issues.
I find this to be a very important statement he made in regards to the development of multiplayer and RTS games. After warcraft, the piles of RTS games that came out all had some thing in common. A few races (or civs, etc) that had different units that all did basically the same thing.. the "ranged unit" the "fast unit" the "strong unit that is really expensive", etc. Other than some small games that didn't really make it off the ground, Starcraft was the first mainstream game that said "this race can do this and this other race is completely different". I believe that Starcraft is replayed so often because there is an incredible amount of flexability with each race and when combined with fighting against another diverse race, it creates an incredible amount of possibilities.
What makes this a great money maker for games such as Diablo and Starcraft (if they'd get off their buttocks), is that they can reuse the same engine they already had written, code in another race (or couple classes as in Diablo II LoD), and have people scrambling to buy it, since it adds an exponential amount of excitement to the game. If Starcraft added one single race (sold at the price of $25 in stores), I would instantly buy it.. not only would I be able to learn all about the new "Dotslash" race, but I would be able to figure out piles of strategies about how to fight Dotslashes with Terrans, or Protoss.. Just as the message boards are filled with people asking how to fight Druids with Necromancers, etc etc.
The game industry needs to focus more on additions to their games, instead of starting from scratch every single time. Not only would the players be happier, but I imagine the pocketbooks of the game makers would be happy as well.
Dave
Don't be a MUD snob. I know it's difficult, we are all snobs about something, but it's not a 13 year old's fault if they haven't played some ancient text game that you liked so much. Hell, I've never played a MUD (I'm 27yo), though I've heard some were *great*. But they weren't necessarily good because they didn't rely on graphics. They were good, because like some cutting edge 3D games, they were designed and coded with care and concern for gameplay.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Seems to me you're blaming the developers for what the legal department and the marketing folks are doing. How many Blizzard designers do you think really care which network the gamers use, as long as they play the game?
You don't seem to get it do you?
The idea behind setting up a game and giving it rules to create an artificial constraint that everyone agrees to work within. The important part is that agreement. Sure, you can technologically bend and break the rules, but that doesn't make it right. The idea is to level the field somewhat and then make it a battle of skill and wits WITHIN the constraints of the game.
The big problem with cheating is identification. If you want to go out and duel against other bot builders then it's a fair competition. Other people are out there trying to move and react as quickly as they can but within the rules. If you present yourself as one of those people (the "nearly undetectable" comment) then you should play within those rules.
So, I'm glad that you get a huge power kick out of being able to dupe people trying to play within the bounds, but you've completely missed the point. Note: The Matrix is a horrible example to justify your actions. The Matrix is about revolution and fighting tyranny, not getting the highest number of frags.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Seeing as my using OmniWeb to view arena.net resulted in a quick glance at the requested page (which looked fine) and then a bounce to ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Browser, I thought I'd respond in kind (note: I didn't actually send HTML email; I had to replace some of the hyphen characters with just bolding the topics so that I wouldn't get blocked by the lameness filter):
To: webmaster@arena.net
Subject: ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Webmaster
Why am I getting this instead of a friendly, congratulatory email?
You are here because the webmaster you are using is apparently too lazy to create pages that work in most browsers, regardless of their support for the full HTML 4.0 specification, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Most likely, you're losing a decent hunk of viewers because of this.
Why does that matter?
In the pursuit of giving web surfers the kind of experience that you want them to have, as opposed to simply letting them control the experience for themselves (as would tend to be suggested by the HTML and CSS standards), you tried to use the best technology available, which I heartily commend. HTML 4.0 and CSS are examples of some of the best and most widespread standards-based technology available for presenting interactive media to the world. However, you have decided that, rather than simply using these technologies and letting the user decide if and how to implement them on the client-side, your webserver will detect browsers that you haven't tested with and will send the user of said browser to a completely useless page rather than actually delivering the content that the user requested.
What should I do?
If your webmaster can't figure out how to get pages to display at all in browsers other than those created by Netscape and Microsoft, you might want to hire a better one.
If you are running a smart webmaster who has simply gone astray from the vision of the web, you will want to either ask them to change their policies or follow the advice above.
But I would add one more crucial point: gameplay should be fast-paced and aggressive. Sitting in your base and defending against unsuccessful attacks is just boring. In Warcraft 2, defending almost never worked and attacking was always to your benefit. The result was an edge-of-your-seat game where, among skilled players, every unit you pumped out was immediately sent to the battlefield and you were constantly trying to stop one of your bases from being trashed. I have yet to see an RTS which, all balance issues aside, is just plain more exciting than a good game of multiplayer War2. This is why I continue to consider it the greatest RTS ever made.
But Blizzard seems to have lost sight of this in later games. In Starcraft, sitting in your base and defending actually works, which makes for terribly boring games. Am I the only one who finds that games after Quake 1/Warcraft 2 have subtly become more and more slow-paced and boring?
Frankly, I would object to the "balance" business, which seems to be taken for granted by all game developers nowadays. Of course, games should be mostly balanced, but saying that ideally a game should be 100% balanced is going too far. A bit of imbalance serves to focalize the players' energies. E.g., in the original Quake, the most important thing was to control the rocket launcher and red armor, and this made for exciting games where players desperately vied for control of the key resources. In later Quakes, you can just pick up any weapon, since they're all just as good.
In sum, I don't think "balance" is the holy grail modern developers make it out to be. IMHO, the attitude of "balance above all" epitomizes all that's wrong with modern games. If a bit of imbalance is necessary to make a game that's more aggressive, fast-paced and fun, I say game developers shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice the principle.
The ones with stock options that spend 14 hours a day doing what they do, and hoping to get paid for it?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
After running around killing bats for a while in EQ this realization hit me - my character could come, go, exist, or not and nothing really changes in the world. It just doesn't matter. This is by necessity - the game cannot make anything pivotal happen based on my character, 'cause it can't assume I'll be around or even that I'll exist (as a player).
So, what you wind up with is a bunch of folks running around killing things and so on, but really to no purpose at all ultimately.
yeah, you can gain levels and become some 50th level powerhouse, but who cares? There are hundreds of others just like you. You might even go out with some buddies and kill some big thing like a dragon or whatnot, but who cares? It'll just respawn in a while anyway. The world is essentially unchanged. It just winds up feeling so pointless.
I guess I've just been bred on single-person games that make you feel like you're truly at the center of the universe (such as Deus Ex, where you literally save reality). Even Half-life, which arguably has a lot going on besides your own sorry butt's survival, makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action all the time. I guess I'm just spoiled that way.
I find in the MMO games I'm just wandering around in a very static world wondering what vermin to kill next or whatever - it's all quite boring really. I suppose guilds might help to some extent, in that they present a nice social environment of bonding, etc, but you really just click the futility up a notch: instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I've read that games like DAOC have a multi-year storyline that will play out some kind of plot, but again, I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
You're still not making sense. In fact, less sense than you were originally.
First you say not to "rely on the existing network code", and then you talk about creating "highly-optimized [...] UDP-based solutions". What do you think UDP is? It's existing network code. The only magic being perfomed is the data inside of the packets. Everything else - from the trivial handshaking to the deeply important things like encoding, transport, routing, etc. utilize existing code. What the previous poster was saying is that you are asking them to rewrite THAT code, and that is outright absurd. Go ahead and do so, but if you expect people to actually use it beyond a home LAN then they're going to stuff it into a TCP/IP packet which is not only going to undo any magic you may've done, but add additional overhead on top of it.
To go back to your original complaint, if you'd like to see how things work without having everyone using prediction, just turn it off. You can you know (and sorry, I'm not enough of a Quakehead anymore to recall the correct variable). Welcome to hell. There's a reason that id, Epic, and everyone else has started using player prediction on both the servers and the clients. Without it you're limited to the lowest common denominator for network traffic. Think back to Doom and how much it sucked when someone with a shitty computer or ethernet drivers connected to the game.
The key to player prediction is the right balance. Too much prediction and you get a lot of silly things like modem players shooting people on OC-3's after they're down the hall and around 3 corners. Too little and you make it unusable for anyone not on an OC-3.
Once [bnetd allowed Warcraft II beta], I think they just drew the line.
Yes, but (a) bnetd and FSGS didn't allow cracking; and (b) Blizzard doesn't have a legal leg to stand on anyway. These programs reverse engineering and reimplement Blizzard's protocol, which is perfectly legal. It was someone else who created the Warcraft hacking patch, and as I understand it neither bnetd nor FSGS directly linked to said patches. If anything, it was sites providing those patches that should have been pursued.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I don't think it's fair to allow the computer to "judge" modem players' moves, and try to determine "if" the player would have got the hit. Not only is this unfair to the player (when they get to a real LAN tournament they'll be roasted), it's also unfair to the vet with a decent connection, because the newbie in essense gets a free hit. I would propose figuring out better ways to communicate over the network instead of trying to second guess the players' moves with algorhythms.
If my connection to a game is rotten, there's nothing the game client or the game server can do about it.
If you're only getting 4 updates a second from the server, your client *has* to guess what the other players are doing until the server tells it what really happens, because the alternative is to have a 4 FPS update.
Likewise, if the server only gets 4 updates per second from your client, it *has* to guess what you want to do, because it can't read your mind. Most servers guess that you'll keep holding down the keys that you were holding when it last heard from you, which is a tolerable solution. What would you prefer them to do?
The networking code in most games is already as good as it can be. The interpolation code tends to vary from game to game, but the effects are usually the same.
The point of game graphics indistinguishable from real life is to make your escape from reality more complete. Just because it LOOKS like real life doesn't mean it has to PLAY like real life. Just look at ID Software's games (from Wolf 3D to Q3A) for an example of games that have gotten progressively more realistic looking without becoming anything more like real life.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
So what? A chess board also doesn't prevent you from moving the pawns sideways.
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