placeholder

1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond

In Age of Empires the time to complete each simulation step varies greatly: the rendering time changes if the user is watching units, scrolling, or sitting over unexplored terrain, and large paths or strategic planning by the AI made the game turn fluctuate fairly wildly. A few quick calculations sh...

Click to view the original at gamasutra.com

Hasnain says:

Excellent technical piece on game design and networking.

“At first take it might seem that getting two pieces of identical code to run the same should be fairly easy and straightforward -- not so. The Microsoft product manager, Tim Znamenacek, told Mark early on, "In every project, there is one stubborn bug that goes all the way to the wire -- I think out-of-sync is going to be it." He was right. The difficulty with finding out-of-sync errors is that very subtle differences would multiply over time. A deer slightly out of alignment when the random map was created would forage slightly differently -- and minutes later a villager would path a tiny bit off, or miss with his spear and take home no meat.”

Posted on 2020-08-22T06:45:29+0000