3. Developer
The University of Muenster, Germany
Publication
“RTF: A Real-Time Framework for Developing
Scalable Multiplayer Online Games”, 2007
”From a single-to multi-server online game: a
Quake 3 case study using RTF”, 2008
“High-Level Development of Multiserver Online
Games”, 2008
4. The development of large-scale MMOGs* is
complex and expensive
huge game content
complicated technical architecture
MMOGs must provide mechanisms for advanced
scalability to support an increasing amount of
players by using additional resources
High performance is especially important for real-
time games
MMOGs: Massively MultiplayerOnline Games
5. Design and realization of scalability mechanisms
within online games are challenging and error-
prone
socket-based communication and scalable
distribution management in traditionally used
programming languages (e. g., C++) are complex
and code intensive.
6. object-oriented, C++-based middleware
system for developing real-time MMOG
The RTF provides to the developer an easy-
to-use interface for abstract description of
the game state distribution among multiple
servers
10. For all transmittable objects like entities, events and
messages, the RTF provides an automatic
serialization mechanism.
11. The RTF supports three basic distribution
concepts for real-time multiplayer games within
a multi-server architecture:
zoning
instancing
replication
The RTF allows the game developer to arbitrarily
combine the described three distribution
approaches depending on the requirements of a
particular game design.
12. partitions the spatial world into disjoint parts, called zones
Clients can move between the zones, but no inter-zone events exist
calculations in the zones are completely independent from each other
13. Used to distribute the computational load by creating multiple copies of
highly frequented subareas of the spatial world
some subareas are copied multiple times and assigned to instance
servers
14. Replication uses the assignment of calculations to entities as a
distribution criteria
The entities are distributed among all servers
Active entities
Shadow entities
15. For the movement of players and entities between zones,
especially between zones that do not lie next to each other
The RTF supports three types of portals
Dimension sizeAB = Dimension (1, 1, 0);
Dimension sizeC = Dimension (0.5 , 0.5 , 0);
AbstractPortal & portalA = * new SpaceToPointPortal (Space (4, 2.5 , 0, sizeAB ),Vector (8, 3, 0));
AbstractPortal & portalB = * new SpaceToSpacePortal (Space (10 , 2.5 , 0, sizeAB ), Space (1, 2.5 , 0,sizeAB ));
AbstractPortal & portalC = * new BidirectionalPortal (Space (3, 1.5 , 0, sizeC ), Space (3, 2, 0, sizeC ));
Zone A
Zone C
Zone B
16. Zoning Restrictions
entities and clients must be transferred between the participating servers if
they are moved between the zones
no interactions are allowed across zone borders
The RTF allows an inter-zone migration and interaction by creating an
overlapping area between two or more adjacent zones.
17.
18. Supports the publish-subscribe abstraction for
interest management that allows the developer to
subscribe a client to an entity of the game world
RTF provides a basic Euclidian Distance AoI
implementation based on the position of entities