Dealing With Latency in Real-Time Online Multiplayer Video Games

Multiplayer video games have been growing in popularity for decades. Online video games, in particular, are a great way to have fun with friends and family from all over the world. But how do online multiplayer games work, and what sorts of challenges are encountered by game developers? Whether you’re interested in making your own game or just eager to learn about some of the techniques used to overcome these challenges, this talk is for you!

What You’ll Learn

• The basics of how video games work
• How latency affects games
• Ways we can mitigate the effects of latency

This Talk is Designed For

Anyone who is interested in online video games. Programming knowledge isn’t strictly necessary, but there may be one or two more technical terms used throughout the talk.

Resources

• Are we game yet?, Rust game libraries and tools
• ENet, UDP networking library
• Godot, open source game engine
• Riot Games’ Technology Blog
• Unity, real-time development platform
• Unreal Engine, real-time development tools suite by Epic Games
• [Valve Developer Community] (https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page)

Julian Miller is a senior software engineer at DigitalOcean who has always loved video games. He feels lucky to have had the opportunity to work on AAA titles in the past.