Deterministic multiplayer
Photon has it already. Normcore when? 😜
https://www.photonengine.com/quantum
Deterministic Multiplayer Engine | Photon Quantum
Discover Photon Quantum, a revolutionary deterministic multiplayer game engine. Develop multiplayer games effortlessly with no netcode, and enjoy extreme performance, sync capabilities, and enhanced network safety
14 Replies
We built it all and decided not to ship it unfortunately. Nock uses it, but Unity’s DOTS / ECS stack ended up being a disaster, and the restrictions on making sure all code is deterministic proved to be a colossal pain ☹️
I may have our team try again in a non-DOTS / ECS way at some point in the future, but I think while it solves a few problems, it creates far more. The only genre of title I think it really benefits in practice is a sports title like Nock, but even then you need a rigidbody between the VR interaction and the ball (arrows in Nock, cars in Rocket League) for it to work, which makes it useless for most titles
Before we attempt again, we have a new architecture for Normcore that we’re going to try that will be more useful imo
still would be good for lots of non-vr titles
Like what? The only title besides Rocket League that I know of that has determinism (kind of) is Overwatch, and even then it is only used for some weapons and is constantly rechecked with the server because it’s not truly deterministic
any game that needs rollback
The more I’ve dug into this problem the more I feel like this as a solution for most things is a false premise. Especially for FPS titles since for those you want to always favor the shooter, not be technically accurate. Players always want the former in practice
games with tons of synced objects like an RTS
like what? that’s what I’m getting
syncing each unit would require 6 floats
if you only sync the inputs it'd be far less
yeah but it’s simpler to make the AI deterministic than the whole multiplayer stack and all game logic
fighter games where you want frame precision would need rollback
street fighter-like titles can benefit
yeah that’s like the only category I think
I def want to add it, but I think the value add is somewhat overblown
compared to how hard it is to get right and how hard it is for developers to use
this was a bit tongue in cheek cos I already knew the situation
haha fair enough
there is 1 VR example, games like tennis where if you use ownership model there's no good way to hide the switch over