From a single- to multi-server online game: a Quake 3 case study using RTF

ABSTRACT

Fast-paced action online games like First Person Shooters (FPS) pose high demands on resources and thus require multi-server architectures in order to scale to higher player numbers. However, their multi-server implementation is a challenging task: the game processing needs to be parallelized and the synchronization of the distributed game state needs to be efficiently implemented. As part of the European edutain@grid project ¹, we are developing Real-Time Framework (RTF) -- a middleware that provides high-level support for the development of multi-server online games. This paper describes a case study on porting the open-source, single-server Quake 3 Arena game engine to a multi-server architecture using RTF and its state replication approach. We conducted extensive scalability and responsiveness experiments with the ported version of Quake 3 to evaluate the performance of our middleware. The experiments show that the responsiveness of RTF implementation can compete with the original Quake engine, and that the replication support allows to efficiently scale FPS games using multi-server processing.

REFERENCES

• 1: M. Abrash. Quake's game engine: The big picture. Dr. Dobb's Journal, 1997.
• 2: Tom Beigbeder , Rory Coughlan , Corey Lusher , John Plunkett , Emmanuel Agu , Mark Claypool, The effects of loss and latency on user performance in unreal tournament 2003®, Proceedings of 3rd ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games, August 30-30, 2004, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1016540.1016556]
• 3: BigWorld Technology <www.bigworldtech.com>.
• 4: Emergent Game Technologies <www.emergent.net>.
• 5: Urban Terror, FrozenSand, <www.urbanterror.net>.
• 6: Frank Glinka , Alexander Ploss , Sergei Gorlatch , Jens Müller-Iden, High-level development of multiserver online games, International Journal of Computer Games Technology, v.2008 n.5, p.1-16, January 2008 [doi>10.1155/2008/327387]
• 7: Michael Kwok , Gary Yeung, Characterization of user behavior in a multi-player online game, Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, p.69-74, June 15-17, 2005, Valencia, Spain [doi>10.1145/1178477.1178486]
• 8: Jens Müller , Sergei Gorlatch , Tobias Schröter , Stefan Fischer, Scaling multiplayer online games using proxy-server replication: a case study of Quake 2, Proceedings of the 16th international symposium on High performance distributed computing, June 25-29, 2007, Monterey, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1272366.1272399]
• 9: Lothar Pantel , Lars C. Wolf, On the impact of delay on real-time multiplayer games, Proceedings of the 12th international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video, May 12-14, 2002, Miami, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/507670.507674]
• 10: A. Ploss, F. Glinka, S. Gorlatch, and J. Müller-Iden. Towards a High-Level Design Approach for Multi-Server Online Games. In GAMEON'2007, pages 10--17, Bologna, Italy, November 2007.
• 11: Quake 3 Arena <www.idsoftware.com/games/quake>.
• 12: Quazal net-z <www.quazal.com>, 2006.
• 13: Rakkarsoft. RakNet <http://www.rakkarsoft.com>.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Distributed applications

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS

Keywords:
Quake 3 arena, RTF, distributed architecture, massively multiplayer online games, middleware, network middleware, online games, performance, real-time online interactive applications, responsiveness, scalability