Multi-players networked games

Multi-players networked games, especially from mobile terminals, are expected to see a huge development in the coming years. Their execution relies on distributed software architectures which have to fulfill very specific constraints. We contribute to these architectures by designing algorithms suited to content-based publish-subscribe, and algorithms for consistency management between the views of the several players.

The first issue that we are considering is the architecture of middlewares dedicated to gaming support. Starting from the analysis of the Open Mobile Alliance specifications, we are implementing these specifications in the Java language.

The second issue is the high latency delay implied by mobile networks, which is a handicap for real-time gaming. We are investigating original sotfware architectures aiming at accommodating this high latency.

The third issue is consistency management. Different players can experiment very different latencies, according to their location and the network they use. This discrepancy can lead to unfairness. We are designing algorithms aiming at satisfying the need of equity between players, by compensating the variable latency effect.