I read the article about Tron 2.0 in your latest issue of PC Gamer; and I was floored when I read "Having light cycles in multiplay poses a few technical problems (such as lag and collision detection), and the time needed to overcome those hurdles would blow our current schedule." The reason I'm so suprised is that I have first hand experience writing a network-based multiplayer light cycle game, and I can say that my project has met with at least some considerable success.

A few years back, I was in a six player light cycles game on a LAN at a University of Dayton computer science lab. Everyone had fun! There were a few glitches at the time; none of which related to latency, and I fixed them all, eventually. I made it Internet playable too; some of my techniques can be seen in network gaming articles I wrote at http://www.gamedev.net . In three player Internet mode with an average ping of no higher than 300, the game was still playable. I have to note, however, that I always tested it with the same three people, and I did not give it the thorough, widespread testing it needed.

I don't know all of the hurdles the Tron 2.0 development team has to overcome exactly; nor what multiplayer paradigms they have considered or experimented with. Still, I am willing to share what I have learned from my light cycle game programming experience with anyone who can facilitate the development of a Tron 2.0 light cycle simulation.


Chris Haag
dragonslayer_developer@hotmail.com
http://www.cycles3d.com