Latency, Dead Reckoning and UTC timestamp

Question

Hi, I am trying to make a Pong Multiplayer game for practicing but I have a problem with the ball syncing. I search a lot and I have seen this post: http://forum.shephertz.com/?qa=5944/how-to-sync-the-ball-of-battle-game&show=5944#q5944 and this one: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/59961/how-to-synchronize-actions-like-jump-in-multiplayer and this one: http://badlogicgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1705 and I have tried to understant how to do it but I havent. So could you explain to a newbie as me how do I calculate the time it last to message from one client to another, and what does UTC timestamp mean, and everythingTT. Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

Hi Raul,

Apologies for late reply.

You can send the current time along with the message so that when you receive the message at the other end, you can calculate the time elapsed in between. UTC time stamp means the time as per the UTC time zone. You should send current time in UTC format because your player may be from different time zones so comparing the from two different time zones will be difficult. But UTC time will be same for both the players so you can easily get the correct time difference. 

Please let me know if you have any further queries.

Regards,

Rajeev Ranjan