UDP Multicast Question

#1 Jake,

V12 does not use multicast. Frankly, it would be difficult to make full use of multicast for a VR game. Since each user is recieving a completely different view of the world, and Tribes wraps multiple object updates into one packet, it would be tough to make use of multicast.

Multicast is great for movies/radio/etc.. where there is one stream sent to many people at the same time. Most VR games are not built this way.

An excellent introduction to the Tribes/V12 protocol is in the resources section: www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=331

--Bryan

#2 Heh... Believe it or not - I'm not planning on creating a massively multiplayer game with it - unlike everyone else. Just a plain old-fashioned 2-3 player thing with relatively small arenas and very few objects to update. So for me multicasting would work quite well. But if v12 doesn't use it then that's fine too. I was just curious.

Thanks
Jake

#3 try to stay away multi-cast in all cases. not worth the hassle, lot of network admin disabled this thing on the router as it is a semi-boardcast protocol.

#4 For 2 or 3 players multicast isn't worth it. You are much better off just sending data down a few connections.

Plus, with multicast you have to send all the data to all the players, which could cause cheating problems later on.

Josh