Unite 2010GDC ChinaAsia Game Show 2010GDC 2011
The Meesha NetworkThe Meesha Network is an implementation of distributed gaming, as described above. It presents a simple API to create game-specific resources and the game network in which they exist. Meesha facilitates all functionality and management transparently to the game application. The Meesha Network provides the following: The current Meesha implementation is specific to Windows platforms. Its API is exposed as a collection of COM objects for quick and easy integration to existing game designs. A technical demo is available upon request (see "About the Author", below). Demo ScreenshotsThe current technical demo implements a single resource type: the map system. The map system tracks information regarding the position of a single terrain object. For the purposes of the demo, one local consumer and two remote providers are shown (Screen1). When the demo starts, the consumer has not received information from either provider resource, thus showing the position of the terrain object incorrectly (Screen2). (Note: the providers are shown side-by-side for the purposes of the demo. In reality, they would serve the exact same positional data.) As the consumer receives data from one of the providers, it corrects its display of the terrain object to follow this provider (Screen3). The consumer will continue to follow the provider across the screen as information is received (Screen4). Artificial latency is introduced between the providers and the consumer so that the consumer will attempt to re-send requests that were not answered in a timely fashion (Screen5). When the "retries" count reaches 10, the consumer will switch from its current provider to the other provider (Screen6). This demonstrates the ability of the consumer (and all peers in the Meesha Network) to dynamically switch resources based on its particular view of the network.
ConclusionDistributed gaming and the Meesha Network implementation have profound implications for online gaming. It is easy to imagine a highly distributed game application where the users themselves increase resource availability by becoming resource providers. (This would have the added benefit of aggregating bandwidth at the end-users!) However, traditional online games companies can also leverage the Meesha Network as a means to easily evolve existing applications in order to scale specific resources (the Player System, the Map System, etc.) and to leverage existing investments in infrastructure. Meesha is an enabling technology that is non-specific to any particular online game. Distributed gaming provides availability, reliability and scalability to online gaming. It consists of a hybrid of peer topologies and provides a proven services model found in e-commerce. The Meesha Network implements distributed gaming in a simple API so that existing and future game applications may feature distributed gaming in their designs. About the AuthorOmar Abdelwahed graduated from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. He has worked in Information Technology since the ripe old age of 15 and wrote his first video game in 1984 (affectionately titled "Save the World From All the Rockets that Keep Appearing from the Right-Hand Side of the Screen"). Currently, Omar is a lead software engineer at Best Buy Co., Inc. where he designs and develops entertainment web sites. Omar can be reached by e-mail at: omar.abdelwahed@bestbuy.com. Further Information / Endnotes[1] Distributed Systems Topologies: Part 1 by Nelson Minar. [2] Convergence of Peer and Web Services by Jeff Schneider. |
|
