CHAPTER 5
Multiplayer
Serdar Gökay Küçük
MULTIPLAYER AS A CONCEPT
 One of the most wanted features in gaming
 May create social aspect to the game
 There are actually very few «real» single player games
 Usually the other players are AI
 Can enhance the gameplay vastly
 Can appear in many forms
 Single-System
 Online
MOTIVATIONS
 Socializing
 Always improving opponents
 Winning and losing to a real person creates a different response
 Interaction with other players can create entirely new stories
 Tournaments, leagues etc.
FORMS OF MULTIPLAYER
 Single System
 Multiple players playing the same game on same machine
 Can utilize multiple controllers, or hot-seat
 Have a big problem with screens.
 Two players can share a screen
 Hot-seat
 No real method of hiding fast-flowing information.
 Online(Networked)
DESIGN CONSIDIRATIONS
 Some different aspects of gameplay might be considered.
 Game cannot be paused?
 Players need to take a break.
 Players should not wait for a long time in idle state
 The game will be abused by players.
 Players are going to create their own playstyles
 No real person is going to use the mechanics that won’t reward enough
 Newbies and strength difference between players.
 There must be a system to protect new players.
 If selected randomly, players abilities will vary wastly.
DESIGN CONSIDIRATIONS
 Social Stuff
 Interaction based on gameplay
 Co-op vs AI gameplay
 Team based gameplay
 Domination style gameplay
 Interaction based on communication
 If expected to happen via text players should have enough free time to communicate
 Vocal communication usually won’t cost time
 Comes free if players share same physical room
 Interaction based on clans, teams etc(doesn’t end after one game).
 May even create real life friendships etc.
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES
 No issues at all for single system games.
 Networking makes everything exponentially harder
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There WILL BE (sometimes a lot of) Latency
IpV4 is NOT a good design for hosting stuff.
TCP/IP stack is usually useless.
UDP is weird.
 But most of the games need instanteneous data flow in theory.
 If you shoot someone in the head while running with even 100 ms latency, you never
going make it.
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES
 So basically most games FAKE multiplayer.
 Real multiplayer games need to wait everyones input.
 A fast paced game cannot wait for every other user’s input.
 But still tested with Quake 2’s first release, was unplayable.
 If everyone calculates the game by itself, game never syncs.
 Cheating is easy
 Sending input and getting results with weird tricks work
 Client side input prediction
 Rewinding time
 Etc...
DIFFERENT GAME TYPES
 Different Types of Games requires brings on different types of multiplayer
challanges.
 «Gökay Faktörü»
 Komutun işlenme süresi/latency