Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!WSL.DEC.COM!kent
From: kent@WSL.DEC.COM
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Interactive game playing over an internet network
Message-ID: <8902062212.AA05305@gnomee.pa.dec.com>
Date: 6 Feb 89 22:12:33 GMT
References: <[A.ISI.EDU].5-Feb-89.12:53:46.CERF>
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	There have been some interesting dynamic games run on low-delay
	nets, mostly LANs (e.g. XEROX PARC has several, but I don't remember
	the names - one involved a chase though a maze of corridors
	and you got zapped if a big, CBS-like EYE was caught staring at
	you - your opponent).

I ported Mazewar to X and UDP a while back. Other people have built
distributed games on top of IP (xtrek and xconq come to mind). I'm not
sure that a centralized server/protocol would have done me a lot of
good -- there's a lot of traffic and the extra hops can become
significant. In Mazewar, one of the games acts as a central server for
people who join the game and does "rebroadcast" of some of the packets,
but there are also some short circuits for efficiency. I only use
broadcasts to try to find an existing game.

Of course, if there had been an existing protocol implementation, I
might have built on top of it, and not noticed any loss in game responsiveness.

	What might be interesting is a delayed/deferred kind of game
	which you could essentially join or leave at any time, catch
	up on, as in computer-based teleconferencing, etc. Maybe
	some sort of group adventure? 

This sort of game has been built, too. Peter Langston's empire for
Unix, built starting in the late 70s, has contributed to more than one
academic suicide. (it's a highly detailed world conquest game, based on
a board game played at Reed College.) I've lost track of the game in
recent years, but he developed it actively for quite some time. As many
as 20 players could play in a single game, playing moves when they
wished. Games sometimes lasted weeks on end...

chris