Title: QuON: a quad-tree-based overlay protocol for distributed virtual worlds

Authors: Helge Backhaus, Stephan Krause

Addresses: Institute for Telematics, Universitat Karlsruhe (TH), Zirkel 2, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany. ' Institute for Telematics, Universitat Karlsruhe (TH), Zirkel 2, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany

Abstract: Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and Virtual Worlds are among the most popular applications on the internet. As player numbers increase, the limits of the currently dominant client/server architecture are becoming obvious. In this paper, we propose a new distributed event dissemination protocol for Virtual Worlds and MMOGs. This protocol is based on the idea of mutual notification: all players send their game event messages directly to all neighbouring players inside their Area of Interest (AOI). The connectedness of the system is ensured by binding neighbours. They are selected using quad-trees. We show by simulation that the proposed system achieves practical performance for Virtual Worlds and MMOGs.

Keywords: QuON; quad-tree-based overlay; distributed virtual worlds; DVE; distributed virtual environments; P2P; peer-to-peer; massively multiplayer online games; MMOGs; distributed event dissemination; mutual notification; quad trees; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMC.2010.032139

International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication, 2010 Vol.4 No.2, pp.126 - 139

Published online: 11 Mar 2010 *

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