Warcraft 3 Q&A

I have a canoe in my pants

Warcraft3 uses something between p2p and client/server (like Starcraft).

The packets go to bnet, then bnet sends the packets to the individual players. The packets contain commands issued by players. You can't give yourself units (or other gameplay cheats) because there is no "get a free unit" command. There is only "buy this unit", and if you can't afford it on everybody's machine, then you're only going to get the unit on your own machine (and then you'll be desynched, and the game will end when you try to use the unit).

The game is not sending unit specific information, (which is why it's not true client/server), because to do so would require much, much more bandwidth on a regular basis than is normally consumed in a client/server game (like an FPS). The disadvantage of this model is that it's impossible to stop map hacks, since all games are running a completely synced game with all units.

The advantage over the lock-step method of p2p over regular p2p is that clients only have to send and receive a single set of packets, rather than sending their information to everybody (like they had to in Warcraft2). As a result, so long as people have a good connection to battle.net, the game won't lag significantly. In Warcraft2, it took just one poor connection between any pair of players, and the game would grind to a halt.

weird:
"games since speed and synchronization are the cornerstones of any RTS network system and too much information needs to be sent between all of the players every second to make use of anything but a peer-to-peer based model. "

speed and synchronization are even more important for fps action games, which why those generaly do -not- use peer-to-peer.

(somewhat in response to #3...)
P2P == CHEATING in games... people could have their clients send bogus messages to other players.

In my experience, any game that's not client-server based can potentially be VERY bad. I've played games (like midtown madness) on a freaking LAN where people still teleport, and what one player sees does not equal what another sees. A guy might be driving around with no wheels because MY computer thinks I hit him and broke his wheels off but HIS computer doesn't think he hit me.

I was playing homeworld cataclysm on a LAN once... One of us alt-tabbed out once, somehow corrupting the game state. From that point on, our game states diverged, and each person saw the other players in a different position on the map. It was really weird, when we mounted our final attack, I could see my buddy, but on his screen I was way too far away.

Yeah, it's probably shoddy programming, but clients should never be the ones to decide what happens. I remember when they announced Quake3 was going to have client-side firing, there were all kinds of discussions as to the implications of that and the time-warping that could happen...

So.. we'll be paying by the month for a game that doesn't utilize a central server farm (much).

God i'd rather have paid monthly for D2 if it had improved those servers.

Well, almost.

D2 + LOD = D2 done right.

modem + WC3 p2p = bad.

I'm wondering how a peer to peer network is going to be less bandwidth intensive than a client/server model.

Doesnt this game have 3d landscape?

Don't worry you still have another year before it comes out.

You know, I just realized that I havent looked into this game at all yet.