Early Access Update 7
build id: 2015-06-09_13-09-30
Hello all! We are happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
Networked Multiplayer Part 4 : Yet Another Peer-to-Peer Networking Implementation
The short version:
Networked play should be smoother with fewer stalls.
The techy version:
We have been doing even more research into various technical options when it comes to the networking code. It turns out that there are MANY permutations of techniques to try. We ran some statistical analysis on them and came up with a non-intuitive approach that looks like it should be a good tradeoff. In theory.
What we are doing is basically trading some input latency for overall smoothness for all players, and prioritizing the reduction of game stalls (which are what happens when the SYNC text turns red). The game is intended to run at the exact same speed as in single player or local co-op, and that is what we are trying to achieve.
In this implementation all players buffer 4 ticks of input, which comes down to a hair under 67 millisconds (4 ticks at 60 hz). Experienced FPS players will probably feel this (as opposed to how local play feels), but we speculate that this is a reasonable tradeoff if it gains us a smoother experience (with fewer stalls) overall for all players.
The previous implementation also buffered a maximum of 4 ticks, but this could vary, with some players having only a single tick buffered while others had more. This, in conjunction with how we were running the simulation, resulted in some severe stalls in certain cases.
Please test as much as you can and give us feedback here.
As always, thank you for your support and patience,
/nornware AB c/o johno
nornware Dev Feed
nornware on Facebook
nornware on Twitter
nornware on YouTube