Distributed systems support for networked games

Network-based multi-user interaction systems such as network games typically include a database shared among the players that are physically distributed and interact with one another over the network. Currently network game developers have to implement the shared database and the inter-player communications from scratch. This paper presents the architecture of a distributed system, Artery, which is specifically designed to support network game applications by providing a high-level application program interface and by taking advantage of application semantics to optimize the network performance. Artery features such network bandwidth reduction techniques as dead reckoning and message aggregation, a novel virtual world database consistency maintenance scheme based on the dynamic group consistency model, and the support for distributed dynamic environment servers. The integration of Artery's features with existing IP multicasting mechanisms is also discussed.