Matrix: Adaptive Middleware for Distributed Multiplayer Games

• Main Authors: BALAN, Rajesh Krishna, Ebling, Maria, Castro, Paul, MISRA, Archan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2005
• Subjects: Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1207; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/2206/viewcontent/Matrix_Middleware2005_afv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Building a distributed middleware infrastructure that provides the low latency required for massively multiplayer games while still maintaining consistency is non-trivial. Previous attempts have used static partitioning or client-based peer-to-peer techniques that do not scale well to a large number of players, perform poorly under dynamic workloads or hotspots, and impose significant programming burdens on game developers. We show that it is possible to build a scalable distributed system, called Matrix, that is easily usable by game developers. We show experimentally that Matrix provides good performance, especially when hotspots occur.