Message synchronization mechanisms based on waiting period for massively multi-player online games

Abstract

In a NVE like massively multi-player online game, messages of participants should be synchronized. A solution for the synchronization problem is to wait for a certain amount of time until the server processes the messages, however determining a suitable waiting period is not easy because of the trade-off between the fairness and the responsiveness. In this paper, we develop methods to determine the waiting period using the probability of interaction among participants and ranks of delays of participants. Our methods take advantages of the property that, in a game with geographical map, each participant usually interacts with the participants around him. We built a NVE for simulation and compare proposed methods with popular method that uses the maximum expected delay as the waiting period. The experiment shows that the proposed method produces better result with lower average unfair ratio while keeping the same responsiveness, resulting in better synchronization mechanism. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.