PKTown: A Peer-to-Peer Middleware to Support Multiplayer Online Games

Author

Jin, Hai ; Yao, Hong ; Liao, Xiaofei ; Yang, Sirui ; Liu, Wei ; Jia, Yong

Author_Institution

Huazhong Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Wuhan

fYear

2007

fDate

26-28 April 2007

Firstpage

54

Lastpage

59

Abstract

Peer-to-peer (P2P) system can support service for lots of end users with little hardware investment, which suits for the efforts to lower down the service cost for multiplayer online games (MOG). In this paper, we introduce PKTown, a P2P middleware inserted into Star Craft and the network layer. PKTown captures all packets generated by Star Craft. We apply application layer multicast (ALM) to transmit the broadcast packets through overlay network. PKTown extends the LAN game experiences to players belong to different LAN. We design a k-regular random overlay network based on game specific requirements analysis. No change is made on binary code of Star Craft. Preliminary test results show that PKTown works well and supports other MOG in the same way. Our contribution is to provide a new game experience method with little hardware investment.

Keywords

computer games; middleware; peer-to-peer computing; LAN game; PKTown; Star Craft; application layer multicast; broadcast packet; k-regular random overlay network; multiplayer online games; peer-to-peer middleware; Binary codes; Broadcasting; Costs; Hardware; Investments; Local area networks; Middleware; Peer to peer computing; Testing; Web server;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, 2007. MUE '07. International Conference on

Conference_Location

Seoul

Print_ISBN

0-7695-2777-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MUE.2007.172

Filename

4197249