Networked Game Issues

Networked Game IssuesNetwork Issues and how they affect gameyplay and interactivityA network is when two or more than computers have a digital partnership between them, particular in networked multi imposter games the players argon physiologicly separated from each other. Networks allow users clients to communicate by burdening bits of info through the internet of the take form of piles, these will then build on top of the internet protocol, and this in terms means that if a software program sent using UDP or transmission control protocol a specific IP address then receives the packet. (Armitage, Claypool and Branch, 2006) Unlike networking in this day and age games such as Doom was played through a LAN connecter (Local Area Network) which at the time used an IPX protocol. An IPX protocol doesnt require a constant familiarity between the exchanges of packets.o1Appendix a1 displays the required layers of hardware and software that Doom required to be run across a network.Th e Topologies that Doom used for LAN partnership, the figure on left in addition a2 is an Ethernet connection that has computers attached to it acting as peers and the figure on the right also in extension a2 is similar to the left figure. All players received a message every 35th of a second that recorded all the players inputs across peer-to-peer network. (Armitage, Claypool and Branch, 2006)Packets are carried all over the internet using networks(Armitage, Claypool and Branch, 2006), the time it takes to propagate a packet of data from a source to its destination is latency, as standard latency will below 150ms (milliseconds) and wont go to a higher place 150ms. A packet must then travel back to the source which results in a round trip time which john take twice as long as the latency i.e. 50ms latency 100ms round trip time. The game world of warcraft consists of two latencies a home and a world latency, home is the connection to the realm waiter which can include in game chat data, world refers to the world of warcraft servers this in term transmit all other data i.e. combat, nearby players (even if they are non on a users screen and NPCs. The latency will increase greatly when visiting highly populated areas because so ofttimes data is being transmitted. In online games there are m most(prenominal) common issues that will cause high ping and latency these could involve wireless issues, packet loss, download speed, firewalls, routers that arent configured correctly i.e. closed ports, QoS and Traffic management where packet queuing is being performed and net link saturation (an issue caused by a users ISP that causes connection issues between a users client and a game server).Congestion is usually the main source of packet jitter, enumerateing if the network has been provisioned correctly congestion can encounter at the router interface, in a provider or a carrier network. A User has access to the router, therefore it is the easiest and best pla ce to aiming time in determining jitter at the router end to track down the source of the jitter depends entirely on the encapsulation.o2 (Ankit, 2012)Latency in online multiplayer games can change due to jitter where different paths are chosen constantly during streams of traffic. While online bid a high speed internet connection is recommended to avoid jitter preferably using an Ethernet c equal to(p) to reduce latency because it is nigh immune to interference.Packet Loss usually has four main causes that will occur these are congestion, device performance, software issues on a device, faulty hardwareo3 the setoff one being link congestion is when a users data needs to be transferred across more devices and links, a link can be at full capacity when the data arrives at must wait before being sent also called queuing. A network device may start to discard education when it doesnt have enough room for data to queue, information being discarded will most likely never be noti ce by the user, many applications can easily discard information and still easily handle data queuing.A users router may not be able to keep up with the traffic that is being transferred this could be due to a switch, firewall or closed ports. Opening ports on a router allows a networked device connected to the router accessible from outside of the local network i.e. other computers and network devices, this benefits gaming greatly where other players can send and receive data with hardly any interference, usually if a port is closed for a certain game a users gaming experience will suffer. Apparently a routers firmware can cause packet loss during gaming according to Netgear community forum, a user was experiencing severe packet loss across many games and after essay altering game settings, router settings and calling his ISP provider multiple times ended up calling Netgear where they recommended using an older firmware on his router and solved his packet loss problem. o4Software on a networked device can cause packet loss if the software hasnt been configured correctly, these bugs can usually be frame using a system log or troubleshooting. While software can cause issues so can faulty hardware and cabling resulting in more packet loss,Bandwidth is measured in bits per second, modern day network devices can possibly support up to billions of bits worth of data rates. Slow internet connection is a common cause of low bandwidth, this can be insufficient bandwidth provided by an ISP. In normal terms bandwidth is when a connection has a limited amount of data that can be transferred. Not only does a slow internet connection cause low bandwidth plainly there are other causes that can happen inwardly a house hold i.e. streaming videos on get via Netflix or any other on demand provider, downloading files from the internet or in the context of games that require numerous large updates while these can affect the bandwidth any user that has a home security syste m which needs a constant stream of data i.e. security footage will also cause bandwidth issues. 5To avoid bottlenecking for users on the same network the above issues should only be performed when network traffic is low. (Smed, Kaukoranta and Hakonen, 2002) Although there are ways to try and prevent bandwidth issues, packet aggregations is used to combine many packets being transferred unitedly in to one larger packet in order to reduce the bandwidth requirements. Depending on the size of the data in the original packets, the packet headers size and how many combined packets there are bandwidth savings can be substantial. The number of combined packets can be determined with two different modes timeout-based method and quorum-based method for timeout-based method before a fixed interval all packets are originated and then become one. An upper bound interval is guaranteed due to the aggregation give give thanks to this method. The worst thing that can happen with this method is n o bandwidth savings are achieved. A certain number of packets are always combined in the quorum method, the number is usually fixed. The transmission delay is not guaranteed because the method is postponed until enough packets have been initiated. The users experience can suffer because of the extended delays in transmission. Both methods have limitations but can each be compensated for when combined (Smed, Kaukoranta and Hakonen, 2002).Internet download speed has always been somewhat of an issue in online gaming where some players can have a slight dis proceeds over others, for example Call of Duty 4 selected a Host player at the start of each match if the player had a slow connection all other players were affected except the host thus the term host advantage was given.The graphical record in appendix a3 displays the just connection and average peak connection in megabits per second across the globe for 2015. From the data we can profit that Singapore has the highest peak connec tion speed compared to the United Kingdom is less than half of the peak connection. Singapore may have the highest peak connection but the average connection is dominated by South Korea, their internet connection is years ahead of most of countries some not far behind. Again in 2015 the United Kingdom has almost half the speed of South Korea thus leading us to believe that South Korea is a nation of exceptional gamers thanks to their powerful intent connection.The above graph in appendix a4 displays the average internet connection for the UK in megabits between March 2013 and March 2016. In those 3 years we can see from the data that the connection speed has more than doubled which gives us an insight that in the next 3 years the average connection speed could double again.MMO Development Discussion and Algorithmic Techniques to Support ScalabilityThere are several things we need to take into account when converting our game to an MMOScalability accomplishmentSecurityThe client need s to communicate with the sever using the game protocol to update the status of other clients at the same time within the virtual game environment things updated include position, health and client name (Yoon and Ng, 2011). First we would need to create a database and link in up to the game sever so that players can register, theres no need for character creation because each client is assigned a character however they could have an personification name. The name they enter would then need to be checked if it exists within the database using a for each loop to determine if it does then prompt the player to try a new name. Once registered, a player can login in using their credentials i.e. username and password and again that would be checked in the database using a for each loop.An overall translucent text box can be used for chat between players this could update on the server side and be sent to all clients. A client enders a message sends it to the server and sends it back to al l clients. Another thing that could be include is a friends list that would save a players username in a clients friends list only if both clients come to an agreement. We could then introduce an instant message selection that would appear in a clients chat box that would be rendered a different colour from normal chat if sent from a friend. See appendix a5 to see how the game would handle and request information that would be between client and game server.To allow scalability we need to distribute servers onto multiple physical severs, a certain number of gaming severs would be distributed onto physical servers, a gaming server would then handle many more connected players than a physical server, if too many players are on a game server the performance will decrease and render the game unplayable, performance will depend the processing power of the servers and the available bandwidth. o5For security we would use encryption, this is so 3rd parties cant view data, both parties are who they say they are i.e. client and server and the data hasnt been modified. We should assume that a user or an attacker can view information that has been sent to the client so the server shouldnt send information that the user should not be able to see i.e. user credentials, client shouldnt really be relied upon for security because an attacker can send pretty overmuch any command they want to a user.o6 The server should handle pretty much all validation and error checks etc., the client should basically just send a message that they are attacking with a certain item so the sever knows to calculate a certain dps (damage per second). Encryption will not work on someone that uses a bot or deterministic movement to send commands to the server, for example using a seeded random number seed will give the same results over and over again which can be extremely good for grinding a quest or a different seeded number generator for say combat where random attacks are used when they are available.Appendixa1 epitome was taken from (Armitage, Claypool and Branch, 2006) paper on Networking and Online Games.a2 Figure was taken from (Armitage, Claypool and Branch, 2006) paper on Networking and Online Games.a3 Data taken from https//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speedsoldid=758974262 and entered into an excel spreadsheet to produce the grapha4 Data taken from (Jackson, 2016) and entered into a spreadsheet to produce the grapha5 (Yoon and Ng, 2011)References1Armitage, G., Claypool, M. and Branch, P., 2006. Networking and online games understanding and engineering multiplayer Internet games. John Wiley Sons2 Jackson, M. (2016). Ofcom 2016 Report Average UK Home Broadband Speeds Reach 28.9Mbps ISPreview UK. online Ispreview.co.uk. Available at http//www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/03/ofcom-2016-report-average-uk-home-broadband-speeds-reach-28-9mbps.html Accessed 20 Mar. 2017.4 Smed, J., Kaukoranta, T. and Hakonen, H., 2002 . A review on networking and multiplayer computer games (pp. 1-5). Turku Centre for Computer Science.5 Packetworks.net. (2015). Low Bandwidth Means Slow Network Performance Packetworks. online Available at http//www.packetworks.net/blog/low-bandwidth-means-slow-network-performance.htm Accessed 20 Mar. 2017.6 Ankit. (2012). What are causes of Jitter in gaming and how to find and deal with it. online Available at http//www.techulator.com/resources/6255-What-causes-Jitter-gaming-how-find-deal-with.aspx Accessed 20 Mar. 2017.7 Yoon, I. and Ng, G., 2011. Developing a MMORPG game in One Semester. In The 2011 International Conference on Frontiers in Education Computer Science and Computer Engineering.o1http//searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/IPXo2http//www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/18902-jitter-packet-voice.htmltopic3o3http//www.annese.com/blog/what-causes-packet-losso4https//community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-WiFi-Routers/Packet-loss-during-gaming/td-p/1 097304o5http//jayurbain.com/msoe/se3250/slides/se3250-L15-MMO-game-architecture.pdfo6http//stackoverflow.com/questions/4307149/should-a-mmorpg-use-encryption