Networking

We held our first regular-time play-test today – 7pm BST is when all beta testers are asked to turn up and fight every day.  Wedge, Pineapple, JamesU and myself duelled for an hour.  It looked like everyone was having fun, but it showed up a problem: four or more players currently taxes the net-code, and you see opponent jumping around too much.

So I’m working on it.  The problem is that the update packets get too full so each player doesn’t get updated quite often enough for their movement to look smooth.  The two-pronged approach I’m taking is to reduce the packet-print of each player, and to prioritise player updates better.  Obviously, your target should be updated every packet… and hopefully there’ll be enough space left to update anyone else you can see.

If mid-ping (any internet game, but not lan) Free For All games have a player limit of four then I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but I’d much prefer eight.  I think we can probably manage that, with jumping if you have more than three players particularly close to you.  Acceptable I think.

I’m off to relax a little bit by making a new special move, and then a lot by drinking beer and watching Bill Paxton and his three wives.  Good night.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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