Jouni Smed

Networking for Computer Games

The explosive growth of the number of applications based on networked virtual environment technology, both games and virtual communities, shows that these types of applications have become commonplace in a short period of time. However, from a research point of view, the inherent weaknesses in their architectures are quickly exposed. The Architecture for Large-Scale Virtual Interactive Communities (ALVICs) was originally developed to serve as a generic framework to deploy networked virtual environment applications on the Internet. While it has been shown to effectively scale to the numbers originally put forward, our findings have shown that, on a real-life network, such as the Internet, several drawbacks will not be overcome in the near future. It is, therefore, that we have recently started with the development of ALVIC-NG, which, while incorporating the findings from our previous research, makes several improvements on the original version, making it suitable for deployment on the Internet as it exists today.

Peter Quax

Jeroen Dierckx

Bart Cornelissen

Wim Lamotte

ALVIC versus the Internet: Redesigning a Networked Virtual Environment Architecture

We propose a visualization approach for analyzing players' action behaviors. The proposed approach consists of two visualization techniques: classical multidimensional scaling (CMDS) and KeyGraph. CMDS is for discovering clusters of players who behave similarly. KeyGraph is for interpreting action behaviors of players in a cluster of interest. In order to reduce the dimension of matrices used in computation of the CMDS input, we exploit a time-series reduction technique recently proposed by us. Our visualization approach is evaluated using log of an online game where three-player types according to Bartle's taxonomy are found, that is, achievers, explorers, and socializers.

Ruck Thawonmas

Keita Iizuka

Visualization of Online-Game Players Based on Their Action Behaviors

Multiplayer online games with support for high user numbers must provide mechanisms to support an increasing amount of players by using additional resources. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the practically proven multiserver distribution mechanisms, zoning, instancing, and replication, and the tasks for the game developer implied by them. We propose a novel, high-level development approach which integrates the three distribution mechanisms seamlessly in today's online games. As a possible base for this high-level approach, we describe the real-time framework (RTF) middleware system which liberates the developer from low-level tasks and allows him to stay at high level of design abstraction. We explain how RTF supports the implementation of single-server online games and how RTF allows to incorporate the three multiserver distribution mechanisms during the development process. Finally, we describe briefly how RTF provides manageability and maintenance functionality for online games in a grid context with dynamic resource allocation scenarios.

Frank Glinka

Alexander Ploss

Sergei Gorlatch

Jens Müller-Iden

High-Level Development of Multiserver Online Games

Internet ubiquity and the success of mobile gaming devices are increasing the interest in wireless access to virtual environments. Mainly due to the mobility factor and wireless medium features, traditional gaming architectures are not enough to guarantee good levels of playability and fairness to mobile gamers. We suggest a new mechanism, called playing session, capable of controlling communications between mobile devices and the game infrastructure. In case of network failures, a mimicking mechanism is in charge of playing, until the communication channel is restored. The goal is to reproduce, with an adequate level of mimesis, the user behavior. According to this approach, it will be possible to enhance the overall playability of Internet games without requiring any modification to the existing communication infrastructure.

S. Cacciaguerra

G. D'Angelo

The Playing Session: Enhanced Playability for Mobile Gamers in Massive Metaverses

A novel framework to model and explore predictive contract mechanisms in distributed interactive applications (DIAs) using information theory is proposed. In our model, the entity state update scheme is modelled as an information generation, encoding, and reconstruction process. Such a perspective facilitates a quantitative measurement of state fidelity loss as a result of the distribution protocol. Results from an experimental study on a first-person shooter game are used to illustrate the utility of this measurement process. We contend that our proposed model is a starting point to reframe and analyse consistency maintenance in DIAs as a problem in distributed interactive media compression.

Xin Zhang

Tomás E. Ward

Séamus McLoone

Towards an Information Model of Consistency Maintenance in Distributed Interactive Applications

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology publishes original research and review articles on both the research and development aspects of games technology covering the whole range of entertainment computing and interactive digital media.

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology maintains an Editorial Board of practicing researchers from around the world, to ensure manuscripts are handled by editors who are experts in the field of study.

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology | Hindawi

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology publishes original research and review articles on both the research and development aspects of games technology covering the whole range of entertainment computing and interactive digital media.

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology

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Papers are published upon acceptance, regardless of the Special Issue publication date.

International Journal of Computer Games Technology

Networking for Computer Games

Networking for Computer Games

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