Compensating Resource Limitations
Jouni Smed, Harri Hakonen · 2017
This chapter focuses on two aspects affecting the choice of compensation method: the balance between consistency and responsiveness, and achieving scalability in computation and communication. It presents different compensation methods which try to reduce resource requirements, usually by increasing processing. Processing power can be used, for example, to compress the outgoing messages or to filter out the recipients who are interested in receiving them. The compensation methods include protocol optimization, dead reckoning, local perception filters, synchronized simulation, interest management and compensation by game design. Traditionally, responsiveness has always been subject to consistency requirements in database research. However, because of real-time interaction, responsiveness becomes an important element in networked computer games and we may have to compromise consistency. Scalability is about dividing the resources among multiple participants, whether they are human or synthetic players. Interest management aims to provide scalability, but managing the entities' interests reduces the responsiveness as well as introducing inconsistencies among the nodes.