Armitage / Claypool / Branch Networking and Online Games

Understanding and Engineering Multiplayer Internet Games
1. Auflage 2006
ISBN: 978-0-470-03046-2
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 232 Seiten, E-Book

The computer game industry is clearly growing in the direction ofmultiplayer, online games. Understanding the demands of games on IP(Internet Protocol) networks is essential for ISP (Internet ServiceProvider) engineers to develop appropriate IP services.Correspondingly, knowledge of the underlying network's capabilitiesis vital for game developers.
Networking and Online Games concisely draws together andillustrates the overlapping and interacting technical concerns ofthese sectors. The text explains the principles behind modernmultiplayer communication systems and the techniques underlyingcontemporary networked games. The traffic patterns that moderngames impose on networks, and how network performance and servicelevel limitations impact on game designers and player experiences,are covered in-depth, giving the reader the knowledge necessary todevelop better gaming products and network services. Examples ofreal-world multiplayer online games illustrate the theorythroughout.
Networking and Online Games:
* Provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge guide to the developmentand service provision needs of online, networked games.
* Contrasts the considerations of ISPs (e.g. predicting trafficloads) with those of game developers (e.g. sources of lag/jitter),clarifying coinciding requirements.
* Explains how different technologies such as cable, ADSL(Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) and wireless, etc., affectonline game-play experience, and how different game styles imposevarying traffic dynamics and requirements on the network.
* Discusses future directions brought by emerging technologiessuch as UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Service), GPRS (GeneralPacket Radio Service), Wireless LANs, IP service Quality, andNAPT/NAT (Network Address Port Translation/Network AddressTranslation)
* Illustrates the concepts using high-level examples of existingmultiplayer online games (such as Quake III Arena, WolfensteinEnemy Territory, and Half-Life 2).
Networking and Online Games will be an invaluableresource for games developers, engineers and technicians atInternet Service Providers, as well as advanced undergraduate andgraduate students in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science andMultimedia Engineering.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Armitage, Grenville

Claypool, Mark

Branch, Philip

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Author Biographies.
Acknowledgements.
1 Introduction.
2 Early Online and Multiplayer Games.
2.1 Defining Networked and Multiplayer Games.
2.2 Early Multiplayer Games.
2.3 Multiplayer Network Games.
3 Recent Online and Multiplayer Games.
3.1 Communication Architectures.
3.2 The Evolution of Online Games.
3.3 Summary of Growth of Online Games.
3.4 The Evolution of Online Game Platforms.
3.5 Context of Computer Games.
4 Basic Internet Architecture.
4.1 IP Networks as seen from the Edge.
4.2 Connectivity and Routing.
4.3 Address Management.
5 Network Latency, Jitter and Loss.
5.1 The Relevance of Latency, Jitter and Loss.
5.2 Sources of Latency, Jitter and Loss in the Network.
5.3 Network Control of Lag, Jitter and Loss.
5.4 Measuring Network Conditions.
6 Latency Compensation Techniques.
6.1 The Need for Latency Compensation.
6.2 Prediction.
6.3 Time Manipulation.
6.4 Visual Tricks.
6.5 Latency Compensation and Cheating.
7 Playability versus Network Conditions and Cheats.
7.1 Measuring Player Tolerance for Network Disruptions.
7.2 Communication Models, Cheats and Cheat-Mitigation.
8 Broadband Access Networks.
8.1 What Broadband Access Networks are and why they Matter.
8.2 Access Network Protocols and Standards.
8.3 Cable Networks.
8.4 ADSL Networks.
8.5 Wireless LANs.
8.6 Cellular Networks.
8.7 Bluetooth Networks.
8.8 Conclusion.
9 Where Do Players Come from and When?
9.1 Measuring Your Own Game Traffic.
9.2 Hourly and Daily Game-play Trends.
9.3 Server-discovery (Probe Traffic) Trends.
9.4 Mapping Traffic to Player Locations.
10 Online Game Traffic Patterns.
10.1 Measuring Game Traffic with Timestamping Errors.
10.2 Sub-second Characteristics.
10.3 Sub-second Packet-size Distributions.
10.4 Sub-Second Inter-Packet Arrival Times.
10.5 Estimating the Consequences.
10.6 Simulating Game Traffic.
11 Future Directions.
11.1 Untethered.
11.2 Quality of Service.
11.3 New Architectures.
11.4 Cheaters Beware.
11.5 Augmented Reality.
11.6 Massively Multiplayer.
11.7 Pickup and Putdown.
11.8 Server Browsers.
12 Setting Up Online FPS Game Servers.
12.1 Considerations for an Online Game Server.
12.2 Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.
12.3 Half-Life 2.
12.4 Configuring FreeBSD's Linux-compatibility Mode.
13 Conclusion.
13.1 Networking Fundamentals.
13.2 Game Technologies and Development.
13.3 A Note Regarding Online Sources.
Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Grenville Armitage Editor and contributing author GrenvilleArmitage is Director of the Centre for Advanced InternetArchitectures (CAIA) and Associate Professor of TelecommunicationsEngineering at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne,Australia. He received his Bachelor and PhD degrees in ElectronicEngineering from the University of Melbourne, Australia in 1988 and1994 respectively. He was a Senior Scientist in the InternetworkingResearch Group at Bellcore in New Jersey, USA (1994 to 1997) beforemoving to the High Speed Networks Research department at Bell LabsResearch (Lucent Technologies, NJ, USA). During the 1990s he wasinvolved in various Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) workinggroups relating to IP Quality of Service (QoS). While looking forapplications that might truly require IP QoS he became interestedin multiplayer networked games after moving to Bell Labs ResearchSilicon Valley (Palo Alto, CA) in late 1999. Having lived in NewJersey and California he is now back in Australia - enjoyingclose proximity to family, and teaching students that datanetworking research should be fascinating, disruptive and fun. Hisparents deserve a lot of credit for helping his love of technologybecome a rather enjoyable career.
Mark Claypool Contributing author Mark Claypool is anAssociate Professor in Computer Science at Worcester PolytechnicInstitute in Massachusetts, USA. He is also the Director of theInteractive Media and Game Development major at WPI, a 4-yeardegree in the principles of interactive applications andcomputer-based game development. Dr. Claypool earned M.S. and Ph.D.degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in1993 and 1997, respectively. His primary research interests includemultimedia networking, congestion control, and network games. Heand his wife have 2 kids, too many cats and dogs, and a bunch ofcomputers and game consoles. He is into First Person Shooter gamesand Real-Time Strategy games on PCs, Beat-'em Up games onconsoles, and Sports games on hand-helds.
Philip Branch Contributing author Philip Branch is SeniorLecturer in Telecommunications Engineering within the Faculty ofInformation and Communication Technologies at Swinburne Universityof Technology. Before joining Swinburne he was a DevelopmentManager with Ericsson AsiaPacific Laboratories and before that, aResearch Fellow at Monash University where he conducted researchinto multimedia over access networks. He was awarded his PhD fromMonash University in 2000. He enjoys bushwalking with his youngfamily and playing very old computer games.