When developing Rift Zone: Contact, we wanted to look beyond making the game easy to pick up and unique to play. Structurally, we wanted to build in other technologies that would allow our game to bypass common problems seen in multiplayer apps. Enter, the Peer-to-Peer Network.
Peer-to-Peer (also known as P2P) is roughly like the Local Area Network (LAN) that was common in the early 2000s and is still used today. Actually, it is a specific type of LAN that is focused on direct communication between devices! Most LANs work through connecting similarly to an internet connection, with routers to channel the connection. However, with P2P, devices are able to "talk" directly, usually with in-built communications components.
Often, multiplayer games will use a central server or servers to manage communications. This means that all players need to be connected to the Internet. When designing Rift Zone: Contact, we wanted to make sure that we could play anywhere, even if there was no Internet. As it happens, most major mobile operating systems (like iOS and Android) support the ability to connect to a P2P network through Wi-Fi and Bluetooth! So, our app is designed in a way to get several devices connected and working without internet, so if you are close with your friends and you want to play, voila! A game is easy to set up! When you start and host a game, the app will inform other nearby devices that you are hosting, and with just a tap in the app, people can join you. In most cases you can find join games in less than a second!
And, the next time you hook up to the internet, all of your unit and game data will be uploaded to the cloud, so when you are ready to game again, everything will be available and ready to go!
Interested in more Rift Zone: Contact? Check out the link to get more information!
https://lnkd.in/gNbsjEwF
#tech #tabletop #P2P #PeerToPeer #TIL
MSc en Supervisión Educativa
2moGood luck!