Design and implementation of optimistic constructs for latency masking in online video games

To achieve interactive experiences comparable to offline games, online video games played over the Internet Must be able to deal with performance issues caused by the connection or infrastructure of the underlying network. A particularly difficult issue faced by developers of online games is that of latency. In many cases, the latency encountered forces gameplay to be very frustrating and breaks immersion for the player, providing an unsatisfactory experience overall. Instead of directly attempting to reduce or eliminate latency from our networks, Our approach has been to reduce or eliminate the effects of latency. Our earlier work in this area introduced a framework based oil the concept of optimistic execution. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of reusable software components based on this framework that are capable of supporting optimistic execution in a wide variety of online video games. This paper also reports oil experiences in using these components in the development of a simple trading game to validate their Suitability for use in games. These experiences have been quit positive, and demonstrate great promise for future work in this area.