Game development is a complex and time-consuming activity that requires domain-specific knowledge and implementation skills. Networked games are particularly difficult due to the additional challenges of implementing the distribution. In recent years, game development has been simplified through tools that allow game development based on entities (objects that compose the game, e.g., avatar, vehicles, trees, and monsters). Entity-based tools simplify game programming by providing entity-level constructs and abstractions to the game developer. However, current entity-based tools fail to appropriately address the development of networked multiplayer games; they either do not support network gaming at all, or compromise the purity of the model by exposing low-level network programming to the game developer. In this thesis, we present a pure entity-based model for developing networked multiplayer games. In our model, the game developer is completely shielded from network programming concerns. In order to demonstrate the model’s practicality, we implemented a game development toolkit called Meerkat. Meerkat uses a combination of generic distribution algorithms and a proxy-based architecture to provide a pure entity-based game programming interface. The same interface can be used to develop both distributed and non-distributed games. Meerkat automates all aspects of networking for the game developer. To evaluate the performance of our system, we built three multiplayer games of different genres. Our experiments show that the overhead of using fully-automated networking can be acceptable for a wide range of games, except in extreme cases where there are strict performance requirements. Meerkat demonstrates that it is possible to extend the pure entity-based approach to networked games while ensuring sufficient performance. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2012-08-29 14:54:00.647

Wind is a natural phenomenon that interacts with the majority of physical objects to some extent. Yet, in games this is often neglected. This is largely due to the complexity of the physics behind wind, in relation to the impact that it may have on the game experience. Adding to the complexity of wind is the fact that many modern games are networked, meaning multiple players need to share a consistent world view. Wind is inherently chaotic in nature, which is a problem for networked games that heavily favors deterministic behavior. In this thesis we will summarize the current state of the art, in games and briefly other areas. With this knowledge we push forward to improve on the existing solutions. Due to computational limitations of a real time game, we have divided up the problem into two steps. First, we run the complex computational calculations of the wind in a certain scenario in an offline setting, storing the result. Next, when running the game, we utilize the pre-computed wind scenario to let the players experience realistic wind at a low computational cost. We also investigate how to network the wind in a feasible way. The result of the project shows that doing offline computation of wind, by running physical simulations is a feasible solution for adding wind in a game setting.