Multi-user gaming in Flash – Lunar Lander tests
Anyone playing my Lunar Lander game won’t know it, but we’re spying on them! The game gets around 20,000 hits a month, which is very roughly one a minute or so, so I thought it’d be the perfect vehicle to test out some real-time gaming techniques.
I’ve replaced the original game with one that transmits your position to ElectroServer, although you won’t notice any difference at all. The only way to see the all the current players is via the swf below :
The button in the top left makes it full screen. If all you can see is an empty landscape, it means that no one is playing. Usually someone will turn up within a couple of minutes, but if you can’t wait, then why not open the game in a new window and watch yourself playing?
At the moment it’s very very primitive. It’s just literally receiving the data and updating the visuals as it gets them, that’s why the movement is quite jerky, even despite the fact that there’s a little realtime easing on there. Of course, I’m going to have to get a lot more into this, comparing the timings with the server so I can adjust for any inconsistencies in data, and of course predicting where the players should be now, rather than where they were a few hundred mils ago.
But I still find it utterly compelling, and naturally I’ll be explaining all of this in my upcoming Flash game programming training courses.
Last night, I left it running (it draws the trails of anyone playing as they go) and this is the image I woke up to :
I can’t help but think that Jer Thorp would be proud of me 
[UPDATE] due to popular request there is a high res version of this now on my Flickr page.
Related posts:
- Lunar Lander 3D in 5K
- Learn how to program Flash games
- Seamlessly looping video in Flash
- 3D cloth simulation in Flash
- More realtime easing : Flash 3D Boxes
Tags: ElectroServer, flash games, Multi-user
That’s awesome! I’d like to have a hi-res poster of your time-lapse on my wall
I’m sorry it’s a bit low res right now but maybe I’ll work on a vector version just for you Jobe
@Jobe I made it into a wallpaper for my aux monitor.
Sweet visualisation! Are you going to try some prediction techniques for the paths?
Yep that’s next on my list. Actually Jobe’s book has some really great examples in, particularly for calculating the latency and synchronising client and server time.
I am proud of you! The time-lapsed graphic is beautiful. I’d love to see a bigger version. Of course it would be great to harvest some simple user data (age, gender, etc. and see if there are any distinguishable playing styles…
Thanks Jer! I have to admit the idea was inspired by (ie stolen from) your smart rockets.
I’ll def be doing a larger resolution version, I was even thinking about whether I could use the AlivePDF library to create a vector graphics file to print really huge! http://alivepdf.bytearray.org/ 
Oh and I also meant to ask how you would get information like that? I could probably get their geo location from their IP address, but anything else I guess we’d have to ask, huh? I wonder who’d be wiling to offer that information?
I think it’s interesting how it exposes the different processing speeds of the game on different systems. I can watch my ship slowly crash to the ground in 4 mins while seeing others whiz past at a much faster rate.
I think we’re definitely seeing some differences in frame rate, but I’m wondering if there are other factors that could cause that weird difference in speed. I’ll be setting up server-client time syncing and that should get to the bottom of it
FYI Mac FP9 and FP10 are both slooooow. FP10.1 runs roughly the same speed as Windows version.
that’s interesting. Is that for the viewer or for the game itself? There is a huge bitmap in the background of the viewer, that I’ll get rid of and re-upload, but the game itself should be pretty light.
The game itself.
I tried some other browsers, Firefox and Chrome both seem fine. I can only get it to run slow in Safari (4.0.4). I get the impression it’s not frame rate related as the altitude counter seems to tick away happily.
You can email me if you want me to run some tests or want full system specs or something.
It actually is frame based (but it really shouldn’t be!) I’ll definitely be looking at optimising but if you could give me specs on the machines, that’d definitely be useful, and I’ll also ask you to check if I update it. The other thing about this game is that I’m running at 60fps which is double what I usually try, so I’m thinking older players might not like that
Thanks for your help!
I’ve optimised it now, can you check again and let me know? ta!
That is absolutely brilliant!!!
That’s wonderful.
The delay is interesting – I managed to flick tabs in time to see myself crashing.
Nice bit of crowd-sourced generative art there! Don’t tell Zen Bullets… he’ll be dead jealous
Massively high res version now posted http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebleedelisle/4306603442/
@alistair Just seen it, and yes, very jealous
Quite beautiful. I’m wondering if there are any other well known games that might produce comparable patterns. It has the makings of an interesting study.
I’ll be recreating a whole bunch of retro games for my upcoming course, so I’ll check it out!
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