Effects of packetization delay on multiplayer gaming experience over ad hoc networks

This paper addresses the issue of supporting time-sensitive multiplayer games in a single hop ad-hoc network. We first propose an analysis of the gameplay experience in such network. To this end, we conducted several experiments of an FPS (First Person Shooter) game over a real ad-hoc network. The poor performances experienced when the number of players reaches a certain value (11, in our scenario) lead us to propose an application layer solution, which could be easily considered by game developers, rather than modifying the wireless technology to support gaming. Our proposal combines packetization at client side and broadcasting at the server side. The performance evaluation, through extensive experiments, proved that these two simple techniques could reduce packets losses (due to collision), and by this way greatly improves the game experience.