Simulation of Massively Multiplayer Online Games communication using OPNET custom application

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an important growth in online gaming. Nowadays, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) may involve millions of synchronous players scattered around the world and engaging with each other within a single shared game. In this paper, we propose a new technique to communicate between players and game server, and between them based on hybrid Peer-to-Peer architecture. We propose to use OPNET Modeler 18.0, and in particular the custom application to simulate the new architecture, which required the implementation of new nodes models and behaviors in the simulator to emulate correctly the new architecture. We use OPNET Modeler 18.0 to simulate the network, applying two transport protocols TCP and UDP, and with different scenarios. The scenarios include both client-server and hybrid P2P system to evaluate the communication of games with (125, 500, and 1000) peers.