ABSTRACT
Without well-provisioned dedicated servers, modern fast-paced action games limit the number of players who can interact simultaneously to 16-32. This is because interacting players must frequently exchange state updates, and high player counts would exceed the bandwidth available to participating machines. In this paper, we describe Donnybrook, a system that enables epic-scale battles without dedicated server resources, even in a fast-paced game with tight latency bounds. It achieves this scalability through two novel components. First, it reduces bandwidth demand by estimating what players are paying attention to, thereby enabling it to reduce the frequency of sending less important state updates. Second, it overcomes resource and interest heterogeneity by disseminating updates via a multicast system designed for the special requirements of games: that they have multiple sources, are latency-sensitive, and have frequent group membership changes. We present user study results using a prototype implementation based on Quake III that show our approach provides a desirable user experience. We also present simulation results that demonstrate Donnybrook's efficacy in enabling battles of up to 900 players.
- Akella, A., Seshan, S., and Shaikh, A. An empirical evaluation of wide-area Internet bottlenecks. In SIGCOMM (Oct. 2003), pp. 316--317. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Banerjee, S., Lee, S., Bhattacharjee, B., Srinivasan, A., and Braud, R. Scalable resilient media streaming. In NOSSDAV (June 2004). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Beigbeder, T., Coughlan, R., Lusher, C., Plunkett, J., Agu, E., and Claypool, M. The effects of loss and latency on user performance in Unreal Tournament 2003. In NetGames (Aug. 2004), pp. 144--151. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bharambe, A., Pang, J., and Seshan, S. Colyseus: A distributed architecture for interactive multiplayer games. In NSDI (May 2006). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net info. http://www.battle.net/info/faq.shtml, 2007.Google Scholar
- Blizzard Entertainment. WoW PvP battlegrounds. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds, 2008.Google Scholar
- Broadband Reports. Broadband reports speed test statistics. http://www.dslreports.com/archive, Sept. 2007.Google Scholar
- Castro, M., Druschel, P., Kermarrec, A.-M., Nandi, A., Rowstron, A., and Singh, A. Splitstream: High-bandwidth multicast in a cooperative environment. In SOSP (2003). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Castro, M., Druschel, P., Kermarrec, A.-M., and Rowstron, A. Scribe: A large-scale and decentralized application-level multicast infrastructure. IEEE JSAC 20, 8 (Oct. 2002). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chu, Y.-H., Rao, S. G., Seshan, S., and Zhang, H. A case for end system multicast. IEEE JSAC 20, 8 (2002). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cowan, N. The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24, 1 (2001).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Dabek, F., Cox, R., Kaashoek, F., and Morris, R. Vivaldi: A decentralized network coordinate system. In SIGCOMM (Aug. 2004), pp. 15--26. Google ScholarDigital Library
- DIS Steering Committee. The DIS vision: A map to the future of distributed simulation, ver. 1. IST-SP-94-01, 1994.Google Scholar
- Douceur, J., Lorch, J., and Moscibroda, T. Maximizing total upload in latency-sensitive P2P applications. In SPAA (June 2007), pp. 270--279. Google ScholarDigital Library
- GameZone. Blizzard Entertainment Announces World of Warcraft Release Plans for Europe. http://pc.gamezone.com/news/11_24_04_09_39AM.htm, 2004.Google Scholar
- Gautier, L., and Diot, C. Design and evaluation of MiMaze, a multi-player game on the Internet. In IEEE Multimedia Systems Conference (July 1998). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gilbert, E. N. Capacity of a burst-noise channel. The Bell System Technical Journal 39 (1960).Google Scholar
- Hamilton, J. A., Nash, D. A., and Pooch, U. W. Distributed Simulation. CRC Press, 1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hu, S.-Y., Chen J.-F., and Chen, T.-H. VON: a scalable peer-to-peer network for virtual environments. IEEE Network 20, 4 (July/Aug. 2006). Google ScholarDigital Library
- IEEE. IEEE standard for distributed interactive simulation-application protocols, Sept. 1995. IEEE Standard 1278.1-1995.Google Scholar
- IEEE. IEEE standard for modeling and simulation high level architecture (HLA), Sept. 2000. IEEE Standard 1516-2000.Google Scholar
- Knutsson, B. et al. Peer-to-peer support for massively multiplayer games. In INFOCOM (July 2004).Google Scholar
- Lee, Y., Agarwal, S., Butcher, C., and Padhye, J. Measurement and estimation of network QoS among peer Xbox 360 game players. In PAM (Apr. 2008). Google ScholarDigital Library
- McCoy, A., McLoone, S., Ward, T., and Delaney, D. Dynamic hybrid strategy models for networked multiplayer games. In ECMS (June 2005), pp. 727--732.Google Scholar
- McCoy, A., Ward, T., McLoone, S., and Delaney, D. Multistep-ahead neural-network predictors for network traffic reduction in distributed interactive applications. TOMACS 17, 4 (Sept. 2007). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Microsoft Corporation. Xbox LIVE website. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/, 2007.Google Scholar
- Mukherjee, A. On the dynamics and significance of low frequency components of Internet load. Internetworking: Research and Experience 5 (1994).Google Scholar
- Ohio University. Ohio University announces changes in file-sharing policies. http://www.ohio.edu/students/filesharing.cfm, 2007.Google Scholar
- O'Neill, V. Adding creamy nougat and a crisp candy coating to the network: XRNM and QNet. XNA GameFest (Aug. 2007).Google Scholar
- Padmanabhan, V., and Sripanidkulchai, K. The case for cooperative networking. In IPTPS (Mar. 2002). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pang, J., Uyeda, F., and Lorch, J. Scaling peer-to-peer games in low-bandwidth environments. In IPTPS (Feb. 2007).Google Scholar
- Pantel, L., and Wolf, L. C. On the suitability of dead reckoning schemes for games. In NetGames (Apr. 2002), pp. 79--84. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Paul, R. More universities banning Skype. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060924-7814.html, 2006.Google Scholar
- Piatek, M., Isdal, T., Anderson, T., Krishnamurthy, A., and Venkataramani, A. Do incentives build robustness in BitTorrent? In NSDI (Apr. 2007), pp. 1--14. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pittman, D., and Dickey, C. G. A measurement study of virtual populations in massively multiplayer online games. In NetGames (Sept. 2007). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Rao, S., Bharambe, A., Padmanabhan, V., Seshan, S., and Zhang, H. The impact of heterogeneous bandwidth constraints on DHT-based multicast protocols. In IPTPS (Feb. 2005). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Robson, J. G., and Graham, N. Probability summation and regional variation in contrast sensitivity across the visual field. Vision Research 21, 3 (1981).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Rosedale, P., and Ondrejka, C. Enabling player-created online worlds with grid computing and streaming. Gamasutra (Sept. 2003).Google Scholar
- Rosenberg, J., Weinberger, J., Huitema, C., and Mahy, R. STUN - Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Through Network Address Translators (NATs). RFC 3489 (Proposed Standard), Mar. 2003. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sony Online Entertainment. PlanetSide FAQ. http://planetside.station.sony.com/faq.vm, 2008.Google Scholar
- YVG Staff. Video game sales break records. http://us.i1.yimg.com/videogames.yahoo.com/feature/video-game-sales-break-records/1181404, Jan. 2008.Google Scholar
- Zhang, Y., Duffield, N., Paxson, V., and Shenker, S. On the constancy of Internet path properties. In IMC (Nov. 2001). Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Donnybrook: enabling large-scale, high-speed, peer-to-peer games
Recommendations
Donnybrook: enabling large-scale, high-speed, peer-to-peer games
Without well-provisioned dedicated servers, modern fast-paced action games limit the number of players who can interact simultaneously to 16-32. This is because interacting players must frequently exchange state updates, and high player counts would ...
Rokkatan: scaling an RTS game design to the massively multiplayer realm
Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in EntertainmentWhile massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) involve large numbers of simultaneous players, two other popular game classes -- first-person shooter (FPS) and real-time strategy (RTS) games - are still only rarely considered for ...
Why MMORPG players do what they do: relating motivations to action categories
This paper presents an analysis of relations between player motivation and behaviour in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). Player motivation is measured in terms of percentile ranks of motivational components for MMORPG players ...
Comments