NGS: An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Steven Webb (Presenter)
• Dr William Lau
• Dr Sieteng Soh
• December 5th, 2006

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Talk structure

• Terminology
• Background
• SimMud VON
• NGS Design
• Efficiency
• Initial Findings
• Conclusion

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Background

• Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)
• network computer game
• thousands of players in a SINGLE virtual world
• persistent
• Popular examples include
• World of Warcraft (WoW)
• EVE-Online
• Everquest
• Many more

http//www.wesnoth.org/
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Background

• A scalable architecture can
• support thousands of players simultaneously
• tolerate a rapid increase in the number of
  players.

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Background

• Client/Server
• Limitations
• Very low scalability

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Background

• Federated Client/Server
• Limitations
• Still not scalable enough
• Sharding
• Expensive

David Brandt. (2005). Scalability in EVE Online
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P2P-MMOG

• Proposals
• SimMud
• VON (VAST)
• Solipsis
• P2P-MES
• MIP
• Zone Federated
• FreeMMG
• MOPAR
• Many more

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Which one is the best?

• Performance metrics
• Capacity
• Delay
• Delay range
• Processing and memory requirements

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Difficult

• New simulation for every proposal.
• Fundamental differences
• Example SimMud and VON

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Classification of Architectures
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SimMud
Lua, E. K., Crowcroft, J., Pias, M., Sharma, R.,
and Lim, S. (2005). A survey and comparison
of peer-to-peer overlay network schemes
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VON
http//vast.sourceforge.net/VON/
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Comparison?
SimMud
VON
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What about existing network simulators?

• Existing simulators
• NS-2
• OPNET
• NIST Net
• Many more
• Limitations
• Long development time.
• Large processing and memory requirements

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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Goals
• Flexible
• Simple
• Automatic capture of metrics
• Modular
• Extensible
• Scalable

David Brandt. (2005). Scalability in EVE Online
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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Goals
• Flexible
• Simple
• Automatic capture of metrics
• Modular
• Extensible
• Scalable

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Design
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Node
Application Layer Router (ALR) Client/Server Regi
on Based Neighbour Based ...
Avatar
Mobility Model Random Walk Random Way
Point NGMM ...
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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Goals
• Flexible
• Simple
• Automatic capture of metrics
• Modular
• Extensible
• Scalable

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Metrics
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Design
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Architecture
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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Goals
• Flexible
• Simple
• Automatic capture of metrics
• Modular
• Extensible
• Scalable

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Architecture
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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Goals
• Flexible
• Simple
• Automatic capture of metrics
• Modular
• Extensible
• Scalable

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Implemented Architectures

• Client Server

• DHT (Similar to SimMud)

• VON

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NGS An Application Layer Network Game Simulator

• Goals
• Flexible
• Simple
• Automatic capture of metrics
• Modular
• Extensible
• Scalable

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Simulator Efficiency
Simulation memory (Mb)
Simulation time (seconds)
Pentium 4 3.4 Ghz, Fedora Core 4
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Results Client / Server
Client
Server
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Results DHT
Traffic
Hops
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Results VON
Traffic
Connections
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Conclusion

• NGS
• Simple, efficient, easy to use (fast prototyping)
• Available online netgamesim.sourceforge.net
• Client/Server, DHT, VON, many more to come
• Preliminary results

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Results VAST (Time 5000)
Traffic
Connections
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Results DHT (Time 5000)
Traffic
Hops