Have you ever wondered how real-time games can keep multiple clients in sync even when there are large latencies between users? How can you see other players reacting to your actions near instantly, in spite of the fact that the communication between your computer and the server is not instant?
Eric recently made a game engine with real-time networking. His article breaks down lessons learned and what you’ll have to consider if you’d like to do the same.
A client can then visualize their experience through a series of images displayed to their screen. In most games this entails things moving around (like players and physics objects) and animations unfolding.
If we target 60 images per second, which is standard, that gives each client 16ms between frames. That is a shockingly brief 0.016s. To keep that in perspective, light can barely make it across the continental united states in that time, yet we have to keep two clients in sync through networks that may span more than half of the circumference of the globe?
Check out the issues and remedies in the article here on Medium.
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