How do developers make it possible to render the same map and real-time events to people using different devices and living a thousand miles away?
In: Technology
Simply networking. There is a server that holds every player on. Each player connected to the server is a client.
The server has to ‘allow’ actions from each client if each player wants to see what happens.
For example, in a shooter game, A client (player) will press the ‘fire’ button. On their screen, it will show them firing but they are asking the server ‘can you tell everyone on the server that player 3 has fired his gun? Also, tell them that out of 30 bullets, he now has 29.
If the server shuts down, the clients inside will be kicked out of the world. regardless if they have good computers or not.
You should also note: sometimes actions made by another player might take time registering to the server. The lower the ping, the more accurate the player.
Now as for map loading, if it is a fixed size such as say… team deathmatch… the map is the same size for everyone. it will be loaded in.
But if it is a HUGE map, then the client will only load in specific chunks they can see. (they will be lower quality from far away, but as they get closer, the details show (or if they use a scope))
I’m currently into game design and Ive dabbled with networking. I still have some things to learn.
All players connect to the same computer and send information about what they are doing in the game. Computer decides how to respond to players actions and sends updated information about that player and what he did/what happened/changed to all other players thus making it possible to have a multiplayer game.
Well, to some degree, they don’t. A big part of developing a multiplayer game is hiding lag and the discrepancies that are caused by lag.
For things like the map, it’s easy; they send the map to everybody once at the beginning. In many games, this is done prior to the server opening, and happens when players download the game. Since they’re all playing the same game, they have the same maps. When modifications are made, these modifications are shared to the server. Some delay is present, but normally not a gamebreaking amount. However, “gamebreaking” is different for different games. COD requires way less lag than chess.
They use networking, typically UDP for most live action games, although they don’t always send/receive as much data as you might think.
A lot of games use something called “client side prediction,” where essentially each person runs the game and the server sends important updates.
Say player A launches a rocket, for example. The rocket’s path is deterministic, so players B, C, and D don’t need updates on the rocket’s position from the server; their machines can just handle the rocket until it hits something.
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