Using Session Initiation Protocol to build Context­Aware VoIP Support for Multiplayer Networked Games Aameek Singh Arup Acharya Georgia Insitute of Technology IBM T.J.Watson Research Center Atlanta, GA Hawthorne, NY [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT and other independent game server hosts have been increas- Multiplayer networked games are the trend of the day. Re- ingly becoming popular. One of the important features of ceiving a major boost from various commercial ventures like a good multiplayer game is the ability of players to interact Microsoft Xbox r [19] and Sony Playstation r [13], the net- with each other. Till recently, it was limited to only the worked gaming industry is set to grow dramatically. These game based mechanisms like shooting. The use of instant multiplayer games allow geographically dispersed and pos- messaging (IM) technology allowed players to send IMs to sibly distant players to participate in a single game. In or- other players in the game, e.g., to coordinate with a team- der to provide interaction amongst players in such environ- mate or to talk trash to an opponent. ments, text messaging and recently, real-time voice inter- The recent upsurge in Voice over IP (VoIP), primarily action through VoIP is used. However, such interactions through better networking support and the development of are mostly out-of-band (not based on game contexts), user- an efficient and increasingly acceptable Session Initiation initiated and limited in operability, failing to exploit the Protocol (SIP), brought about another valuable addition to entire potential and functionality of VoIP. the whole environment. Now instead of sending text mes- In this paper, we present mechanisms and design of a pro- sages, users can send and receive real-time voice. This al- totype that allows game-context based VoIP communication lows for team members to continuously talk to each other between players. Thus, in addition to allowing players to and thus strategize and coordinate activites on the fly. This talk to each other to coordinate teammates and activities is achieved using VoIP conferencing (similar to regular tele- (through a static team-based audio conference) as in some phone conferencing) and making teammates or all players of the current systems, it supports communication among participants of the conference. However, this mode of inter- players based on shared contexts like the same physical lo- action is still limited in many ways. cation or room within the gaming environment. We use the { Game Context Independent: First and foremost, such Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [14] to realize VoIP and inter-player interaction is game-context independent. describe mechanisms for building network gaming services This means that a player, Bob will always be talk- using SIP. We also propose a sophisticated gaming scenario, ing to another player, Alice even when Bob is fighting in which VoIP is used to relay information about another daemons miles inside the earth's crust while Alice is player's distance and location with respect to the recipient, tackling aliens lighyears into the space. The gaming e.g. players farther away sound farther away. experience can be extensively improved if the interac- CATEGORIES AND SUBJECT DESCRIPTORS tion allows for taking the game-context into consid- C.2.2 [Network Protocols]: Applications eration, thus allowing players only in the same game room to interact, for example. GENERAL TERMS: Design { Requirements for User Initiation: The underlying VoIP KEYWORDS: SIP, VoIP, context-aware, gaming support is static in nature, requiring user initiation to change any current environment. For example, the 1. INTRODUCTION switch from one audio conference to another, if al- The area of networked gaming has been growing steadily. lowed, requires the user to perform actions like pushing With increasing network speeds and better infrastructural certain buttons on gaming console, whereas it is desir- support, it is now possible to have players in opposite parts able to provide seamless transitions from one confer- of the world participating in a single game. Various online ence context to another. services like Xbox Live [19], GameSpy Arcade [8], OMGN [11] { Operability: Many of the VoIP technologies being used bind users to particular consoles/audio devices, whereas it would be much better to allow a user to use any kind Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for of VoIP device. personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies In this paper, we try to overcome these issues and also try bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific to create a futuristic gaming environment. Specifically, permission and/or a fee. SIGCOMM'04 Workshops, Aug. 30+Sept. 3, 2004, Portland, Oregon, USA. 1. We describe the design and implementation of SIP Copyright 2004 ACM 1­58113­942­X/04/0008 ...$5.00. based VoIP mechanisms to perform tighter coupling of 98 voice communication with the game environment. We sip:[email protected]. The mapping of the SIP URL to achieve this by enabling the game server (for a central- the appropriate physical UA device is done using interme- ized scenario) to do SIP communication with a VoIP diate SIP proxies, location and redirect servers, which form conference server or by directly enabling game clients an overlay network. All UAs REGISTER with a SIP regis- to do this communication. We also discuss possible trar server (can be at the SIP proxy itself), which main- gaming and conferencing architectures. tains the address of the UA device. Then, all requests 2. Our framework provides for seamless switching of con- for the SIP URL are routed to the appropriate device for ferences based on gaming-contexts, without requiring that particular UA. An extension of SIP also supports SUB- any user involvement in the process. In addition, using SCRIBE/NOTIFY mechanisms, in which UAs subscribe to SIP allows us to use a multitude of audio devices, thus certain events at another UA and can be notified whenever uncoupling the game from the audio console. that event occurs. We refer the reader to [14] for more intri- cate details about SIP. The overall architecture of such an 3. We also present means of achieving \adhoc" on-the- environment is shown in Figure-1 [17]. SIP was our auto- fly audio conferencing, which is responsible for the dy- matic choice for VoIP because of its simple yet functionally namic nature of audio sessions. Using such a feature Page 1 of 1 rich design and its widespread acceptance. allows us to extend gaming by allowing a group of par- ticipants to engage in a conference on-the-fly. 4. We also propose a sophisticated gaming environment, which performs an even closer integration by using en- hanced audio mixing and provides much more accurate simulation of the real world scenarios. 2. SIP AND VOIP VoIP refers to the technology that enables sending voice data over the IP network. The traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) has a different backbone of in- frastructure than the IP based internet, we are familiar with, and is only used to transmit audio data. On the other hand, VoIP enables transmission of audio on the IP net- work itself, which otherwise is primarily used to transmit Figure 1: SIP based VoIP Architecture data. This integration presents great opportunities for both service providers and consumers. While VoIP has various advantages like lower costs, greater consumer control and 3. ARCHITECTURE location flexibility, its typical problems have been Quality of In this section, we will first discuss audio conferencing ar- Service (QoS) and standardization. However recently, with chitectures using SIP based VoIP. Then, we describe the in- better infrastructure support, increasing network speeds and tegration of gaming infrastructure with this underlying con- emergence of a widely acceptable and efficient protocol - SIP, ferencing architecture. Note that this section only explains VoIP is beginning to show its true potential. the components involved in the infrastructure and broad in- SIP is an HTTP like protocol, which distinguishes be- teractions between the various components. The protocol tween the process of a session establishment and the ac- details and workflows will be discussed in Section-4. tual session. The session between two user agents (UAs) is established using SIP signaling mechanisms which involve 3.1 SIP based Conferencing sending an INVITE, an OK response and an ACK to the re- The goal of audio conferencing is to allow multiple users sponse [14]. These messages contain user parameters (using to communicate in a group. Similar to regular PSTN con- Session Description Protocol - SDP) for choosing appropri- ference, it means that every participant hears voices of all ate IP address and port which will be used for actual data other participants. This indicates the need of a media mixer, transmission as part of the session. This path for data is typ- which can mix (combine) voice signals from a set of users ically called media path, though any kind of data (even other into a single signal for the recipient. Thus, for each par- than multimedia) can be transmitted. The IP/port combi- ticipant the mixer will mix the voice signals of every other nation can be for any networked device like an IP phone, participant and transmit a single cumulative signal. The game console or a PC. Typically, the media data is sent media is exchanged between the mixer and the participant using RTP and signaling is accomplished using either TCP on the media path of the SIP session.