A case study on using rtf for developing multi-player online games

Abstract

Real-Time Online Interactive Applications (ROIA) include a broad spectrum of online computer games, as well as challenging distributed e-learning applications, like virtual classrooms and collaborative environments. Development of ROIA poses several complex tasks that currently are addressed at a low level of abstraction. In our previous work, we presented the Real-Time Framework (RTF) - a novel middleware for a high-level development and execution of ROIA in single- and multi-server environments. This paper describes a case study in which a simple but representative online computer game is developed using RTF. We explain how RTF supports the design of data structures and their automatic serialization for network transmission, as well as determining and processing user actions when computing a new game state; the challenge is to provide the state updates to all players in real time at a very high frequency. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.