Multi Player Technical Challenges

Multiplayer FreeSpace faces a different set of technical challenges than a typical first person shooter. This interview with Dave Baranec explains some of the technical differences. A traditional first person shooter emphasizes movement primarily in two dimensions inside a pre-determined "level" environment, but the three dimensions of space combat results in a dynamic rather than a static environment. While walls hide many of the other players in a first person shooter, in a space simulation "you pretty much see 50% of everything in the mission at any given time. Ten fighters at 300 polygons apiece starts to add up real fast." This has an effect on the speed of the game and your frames per second, but it also greatly increases amount of data required to be transferred back and forth constantly during multiplayer.

The original FreeSpace had some difficulty meeting the multiplayer part of these challenges, but the FreeSpace 2 demo shows how much effort has gone into improving the smoothness of multiplayer play. Some major changes involve shifting some of the processes client-side and optimizing the data that is transferred between the host and the clients. Testing these multiplayer changes involved both a public beta test and a private beta test. These efforts to improve multiplayer performance continued even after the release of the demo, and some changes were implemented in a patch. Even afterwards, a semi-public beta test of volunteers continued on a special Volition server. I'm not going to try to explain all of the changes because I can't, but I will say that the result of all this effort shows.

My experiences with FreeSpace multiplayer have been very favorable on my connection, which is limited by the 56k upload limit on a cable modem provided by my local Chicago cable provider. Gameplay is relatively smooth when playing on hosts using single channel ISDN to high-speed Cable and DSL. The most important thing to remember about FreeSpace multiplayer is that the host is the one that requires the bandwidth, not the clients. From my experiments with friends, each person will require 28k of bandwidth for the host. 56k modems can only reliably host 2 players, dual channel ISDN modems can host 4 players, and T1 or DSL connections can host up to 8 players. Cable modems will depend on your upload speed, which is usually limited to substantially less than the download speeds. If you're a client, the game has been designed so that 56k modems will provide good performance with only a few "hitches" where the internet loses your packets -- something that happens in any game due to the unreliability of the internet. Tolerance for the unreliability of the internet is well within reason, and much better than in the original FreeSpace.

FreeSpace is a very different multiplayer environment than a traditional first person shooter, where "low ping bastards" are the bane of those limited to 56k, because high-bandwidth hosts are greatly appreciated on Parallax Online (PXO), Volition's free online matching service integrated into FreeSpace. Instead of having players calling you names, they'll be lining up to join your games when you're hosting online. It is also possible to set up dedicated servers on PXO or just on a dedicated IP address. LAN support can be easily set up in FreeSpace 2. I believe the best way to play any multiplayer game, including FreeSpace 2, is at a LAN party where your friends are all in the same room. Even though FreeSpace allows voice transmission to call out for someone to cover your six, there is nothing better than enjoying the same game while sitting in a room together.

One multiplayer feature which was removed from FreeSpace is the ability for an "in-game join." Even though this ability to join at any time during a game is common in first person shooters, Volition learned that this part of the network code simply caused too many problems with the servers and syncing of multiplayer games. It was clear from Volition's response that the goal was to release the most stable multiplayer code possible, even if it resulted in the loss of an additional feature and caused an outcry in parts of the FreeSpace community. As a result, all players must join the game at the beginning. When the mission begins then the game is closed until the battle is completed.

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