Possible multiplayer
Challenges
The Frozen By The Sun game consists of several components. All of them are already designed to be able to communicate both locally and over the internet. The problem is that communication between the Game engine and BMD process requires a lot of bandwidth and is latency sensitive.
Figure – Bandwidth used by communication channels
This will be a challenge for both multiplayer and consoles, because in both cases, the BMD processor needs to be running in the cloud and only the Game engine can run locally. It should be possible to decrease required amount of data by better filtering events in the game and using better encoding. This should be possible, but requires further development.
Single player model
For a single player mode on the fast PCs (the default planned release of the game), the BMD processor will be running on the local PC.
Figure – Single player model for fast PCs
For a single player mode on consoles and slower PCs, the BMD processor will be running in the cloud. The BMD processor will hold a complete state of the world by holding all the modifiers for the procedural generator and a local BMD database.
Figure – Single player model for consoles and slower PCs
Multiplayer model
A multiplayer model extends the single player model with the BMD processor in the cloud. One BMD processor will be shared between multiple payers.
Figure – Multiplayer model
All players will share the same world and have the same opportunity to modify it. This will never be suitable for MMO approach. The maximal number of players will be limited to 8. That should be enough to play with friends.
The multiplayer is currently not planned for this campaign. We plan to add it in the future, after the release of the final version of the game. But we will make sure that the components are ready to be expanded for the multiplayer.