[stoptalkingshit]

It works just fine.. for non-realtime games (and has been widely used for such games since forever). I've done the tests - you cannot just "tweak" it, and even if you could you'd be relying on the networking stack to do something it's not intended to do.

[forrestthewoods]

You might be surprised. World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 are both TCP. It's pretty common for MMOs. It can also work well for some types of RTS games where the added latency isn't a major issue.

[lucian1900]

They're not real-time, though, in the sense that a delayed message is as good as no message. The tolerance is high enough that a few delays usually don't affect gameplay.

[RyanZAG]

All flash games use TCP (as you can't use UDP in flash). There are many realtime flash games. Many MMORPGs use TCP for compatibility reasons: they are very much real-time, especially something like PVP in world of warcraft, etc. Guild Wars also uses TCP and is very much a 'twitch' based realtime game as well.

[shultays]

PVP in mmos are hardly real time.

[RyanZAG]

Spell interruption in warcraft? Also first youtube video for 'guild wars 2 pvp' : https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KR...

Looks like real time to me.

[PeterisP]

WoW is the type of game where it can reatroactively change things when data is received and have it mostly be unnoticeable.

Your spell interruption example illustrates it perfectly - spells can be interrupted if the interrupt is within the 1-2s cast time of the spell. It's adjudicated on server side, where the server knows the spellcast start and sends feedback on the spell results (including if any interrupts happened). If there is minimal delay then it works without being noticed; however when I had significant packet loss, then the spellcasting would 'end' for me only after the response (including check if it was interrupted) was received, and it could be multiple seconds later.

The point is, that WoW can mostly function if the orders and feedback are received with delays, since if some opponent in reality(server) is somewhere else than I see, then it usually doesn't change anything - but for a rapid movement FPS game, that would change hits to misses which is the core of that game.

[shultays]

Didn't play much wow but aren't spell cast times like 2-3 secs in wow? Even with a 0.5-1 sec delay, it would be playable. Never played guild wars

Maybe my definition of real time is incorrect. But you don't point and click in MMOs generally, it is all aoe spells or targetted abilities. There are big margins of time or spell aoe to overcome delays of network packets.

[Glide]

1.5 second cast times with abilities to push that down to around 1.0s. A lot of the interrupts are off the global cooldown in order for players to use spell interrupts effectively.

.5 - 1 seconds of delay may not seem like much, but it actually adds up to be quite significant because of the global cooldown would also be enforce client side and so a player with higher delay would have done fewer actions in the same amount of time.

[Luyt]

Spells vary in casting time. Many spells are instant.

[m_mueller]

- and the instant ones aren't interruptible I guess?

People, I don't even get what you're discussing here. That TCP should be fine for any game's network code because it works for WoW?

[DonPellegrino]

I disagree. Even back in 2005-2006 - almost a decade ago!, in Guild Wars pvp, it was possible to interrupt a 1 second spell with a 1/4 second one, leaving you with 750ms for human reaction time and latency.

[stoptalkingshit]

World of Warcraft is not a "twitch" game. Ever multi-screened it? Why make all this stuff up? This may surprise you, but Flash games don't set the standard for quality network code.