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A NEW CONCEPT FOR REAL-TIME WEB GAMES
Developing Highly Real-Time Web Games
Yoshihiro Kawano
1
, Masahiro Miyata
2
, Dai Hanawa
3
and Tatsuhiro Yonekura
4
1
Intec NetCore, Inc.,Tokyo, Japan
2
Department of Computer and Information Science, Ibaraki University, Ibaraki, Japan
3
Department of Computer and Information Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan
4
Department of Computer and Information Science, Ibaraki University, Ibaraki, Japan
Keywords: Web game, Real-time, Ajax, Information extraction layer, Dead reckoning, Allocated Topographical Zone.
Abstract: Online games have rapidly gained popularity as network speed and computer performance has improved.
Network latency remains a significant problem, though, in applications needing high interactivity, such as
action games and real-time sports games. Such applications are called a Distributed Virtual Environment
(DVE). In general, a server-client architecture is used for a DVE. In this paper, we focus on the current Web
system, the most widely used infrastructure of this type, and propose a strategy for designing real-time Web
games. To date, no such design strategies have been explicitly established. In an earlier paper, we
introduced two techniques, called Dead reckoning and Allocated Topographical Zone. Here, we explain
how these can be used in real-time Web games to overcome the limitations of HTTP communication. As an
example of such application, we have implemented a Web-based real-time avatar operation game. This
implementation confirmed that our concept can be extended to various types of real-time Web application.
1 INTRODUCTION
Online games are increasingly popular due to
improved network speed and computer performance.
Network latency is a significant problem, however,
in applications requiring high interactivity, such as
action games and real-time sports games (Takemura,
1999). Such applications are called a Distributed
Virtual Environment (DVE). In general, a server-
client architecture is used for a DVE (Takemura,
1999).
Examples of highly real-time online games are
Counter-Strike (Valve Corporation, 2007), which is
a first-person shooter (FPS) game, and Age of
Empires III (Microsoft Corporation, 2007), a real-
time strategy (RTS) game. Another example is
SHIN-SANGOKU MUSOU BB (KOEI Co., Ltd.,
2007), which is a highly real-time multiplayer action
game that is only open to users of a particular
Internet service provider (ISP). To play such online
games, though, the user has to install dedicated
client software for each game. Moreover, if the
software uses a particular port-number, it might not
be possible to transmit the necessary data past the
user’s firewall.
In this paper, we focus on use of the Web as the
infrastructure to support online games because it is
the most widely used. When a game is actualized on
the Web, users can easily play it through a browser,
and this tends to lead to growth in the number of
users. On the other hand, if HTTP is used to transmit
the data, the transmission will not be limited by a
firewall. Such a technique can also be applied for
educational applications.
The Web game Dinoparc (Motion-Twin, 2005) is
an example of a multiplayer online game available
on the Web, although no highly real-time Web
games of this type have been reported. On the other
hand, a JAVA-based MMORPG (massively multi-
player online role playing game) called RuneScape
is available on the Web (Jagex Ltd., 2007), but this
game does not allow highly real-time interaction. A
Shockwave-based MMOFPS real-time Web game
called Tank Ball2 is also available (Maid Marian
Entertainment, 2004), but the consistency of
collision detection between tank and ball is
questionable even though the collision detection is
the most critical factor in the game. Such a lack of
consistency in real-time games means that shared
objects cannot be jointly controlled by all users
171
Kawano Y., Miyata M., Hanawa D. and Yonekura T. (2008).
A NEW CONCEPT FOR REAL-TIME WEB GAMES - Developing Highly Real-Time Web Games.
In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 171-177
DOI: 10.5220/0001525701710177
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