A Testbed for P2P Gaming using Time Warp Stefan Tolic Helmut Hlavacs University of Vienna, Dept. for Distributed and University of Vienna, Dept. for Distributed and Multimedia Systems Multimedia Systems Lenaug. 2/8 Lenaug. 2/8 Vienna, Austria Vienna, Austria
[email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT work lag does not necessarily have a strong effect on the Peer-to-peer based gaming is a new paradigm for distributed outcome [4, 7]. multiplayer online gaming that has attracted attention in the last years. It is known that P2P based topologies offer In this paper we introduce a testbed for observing the oc- good scaling properties and mitigate unfairness otherwise currence of inconsistencies and their removal when applying observed for peers being far away and thus having large net- Time Warp, which is described below. The testbed is a fast work lags. However, removing inconsistencies for high paced paced tank battle game that was developed solely for this action games like FPS or tank battle games requires the im- purpose. plementation of a Time Warp-like mechanism, which itself may hinder gameplay for high lags. In this paper we present a tank battle game named Panzer Battalion. Created from scratch, this game follows the P2P approach and implements 2. RELATED WORK Time Warp for removing inconsistencies. Panzer Battalion Basically there are three types of topologies for multiplayer is meant as a testbed for creating rollbacks and understand- online games [5]. The simplest topology uses one central ing, how Time Warp rollbacks depend on network lag, and server that solely simulates the game environment and stores how gameplay is altered by them.