Improving online gaming experience using location awareness and interaction details

Abstract

Latency is a key element for online game quality and user experience. The client-server approach is a widely used system supporting hundreds of thousands of players on a regular basis. However, if latency among players via an intermediate server is large, timely interaction for them could be difficult. In this article, we present a procedure to share game states for a group of players within their area of interaction so that players can comply with stringent time-constraint and improve their game experience. As players move around in a game space, so do their virtual positions. In addition, the relative orientation of players within an area of interaction is unpredictable which indeed changes quite frequently. Because of these facts, we cannot make a predefined rule set for message exchange among players. So a message exchange plan currently working well might have low efficiency after a while due to dynamic changes. In our procedure, considering the importance of interaction, relative orientation, and virtual and geographical locations, we devise a message exchange plan that works alone in each client machine with the local information available. Significant performance improvements are noticed through simulations, validating our approach. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.