I had rapid success with creating drag and drop inventory this week, so I started in on an online multiplayer framework that would work on the iPhone. Arcana showed me that turn-based is quite doable, but I had a hankering to have more realtime play, mmo style. I had a multiplayer prototype pretty early on this year actually but I wasn’t going to use it soon and I didn’t keep it around.
I’ve also learned a bit more about nuances and timing gotchas that happen on the iPhone.
So I created a timer loop which sends out updates 10 times a second. On the other side, the remote client receives the update and interpolated the physics object attached to the player object and creates a smooth update. I tested it first with two players, then after figuring out how to use the interpolation and physics object to smooth things out, I turned sown the update frequency and tested with four players. Two web browsers, an iPod touch 2g, and my iPhone 3gs. It ran pretty smooth all around, but I have a nagging idea that just won’t go away…
If I were to use click-to-move gameplay, where the player clicks a spot on the ground and then moves towards it, I would *dramatically* cut down the net traffic. I’d also be transmitting rotation, but then the iDevices could handle many more players in a scene. I’m going with a crazy low poly count on the player model: 559 right now. It would be a tremendous competitive advantage if I did something no one else is doing and made it high capacity as well.
The real crucible is that the average gamer likes a certain style of player control. So CTM could be a nasty failure. I need a success. Well, as awkward as it may be, it is a magic dust to the game technology so I am going to begin thinking of it as a gameplay feature. Diablo was a CTM game.
So tomorrow I will prototype that concept and see how it pans out. While using traditonal multiplayer networking means I can’t even come close to the MMO moniker, CTM could very well help that to reality. The big prob with iPhone multiplayer is that it’s hard to find pol to play. Lots of games and casual gameplay needs make multiplayer a flash in the pan. I plan on countering that by going cross platform with the client, allowing web, mac, pc, iPhone. This should help ensure that players will be online to give the persistent world the life it needs.