ver wonder why some games Lag more than others? I’ve been wondering this since the days of Ultima Online (which had a tendency to LAG TO A HALT at the Britannia bank). The answer lies in a shroud of complexity, which I hope to help lift someday very soon.

Obviously, we have to first take into account the effect of the same game running on different servers, how many network hops those servers are away from the player, the system specifications of both server and client, and random internet noise. All those things stripped away (i.e. that MAJOR part of the shroud of complexity pierced), the answer lies in game design.

To start to riddle out the true reasons why some games Lag more than others, we have to look at the very first game design decision that has to be made… UDP or TCP. Gamasutra.com has a lot of good discussions about TCP or UDP. (If you are not a Gamasutra member, it is free to join, I recommend it). The general consensus is that UDP is far superior for tons of reasons. The one we care about is that games that are written using TCP/IP generally Lag worse than others (under certain network conditions, such as packet loss, etc.).

The next place to start answering the question is, assuming the game is using UDP, is it using it wisely? My team of scientists (engineers really) at Bigfoot Networks are riddling through this right now. The answer is complex. We are trying hard to pierce this shroud, but the answers will surprise game designers. As we uncover more truths, I’ll try to keep people updated here. As a hint to what we’re learning, it turns out that the amount of multithreading done or not done greatly effects the responsiveness of games. That is not the only issue, there are many, but it is one of the ‘threads’ we are investigating.

Tytus