Optimizing an MMOG Network Layer - Reducing Bandwidth Usage for Player Position Updates in MilMo

Abstract

Massively Multiplayer Online Games give their players the opportunity to play together with thousands of other players logged into the same game server. When the number of players grows so does the network traffic at a quadratic rate. Care has to be taken to be able to support the amount of players wanted. In this thesis, three different methods were explored and their ability to reduce the network traffic analyzed. The network traffic that was analyzed was generated by the use of a for the purpose developed test client that simulates player movement. We show that to scale an online world to a large number of concurrent users, one needs to limit the amount of other users for which any one user needs to receive updates about. To achieve this, the game world needs to be partitioned.