I know things have been moving slow lately, but they are progressing. I have just completed my latest bit of work, adding the ability to emulate a variety of connection conditions. You can look at the sandbox game on twgs.classictw.com port 2003 pword sandbox if you'd like to see the new emulation editor, option Y from the main menu.

What I've been doing is optimizing the game and getting it to run as fast as it possibly can, but then adding delays and pacing so the game doesn't run too fast. The result is a more efficient game using less CPU while running at the "as designed" speed rather than as fast as the CPU and network speeds allow.

In this emulation editor, you can specify your input and output bandwidth, plus your latency (ping time). Bandwidth can range up to 1 Mbit/sec, with a variety of presets for common speeds over the years (4800, 9600, 14.4, 56K modems, 128 Kps, 144 Kps, 768 Kps broadband, etc). I can achieve 1 Mbit/sec output on a local connection by displaying the main menu, and that pulls about 10% CPU on the classictw.com test server. By comparison, the older version could handle about 140 Kbit/sec at about the same CPU, so it's definitely more efficient and can potentially run much faster now.

Latency can be set from 0 ms up to 500 ms. Latency is assumed symmetric, so half of the latency is applied on input, half on output. A true 0 ms latency is only possible on a local connection. Setting to 0 ms on a remote connection means you'll experience the true network latency of each connection.

In both bandwidth and latency, the values chosen in the editor will limit the connection's performance so that no connection will be faster or have less latency than others. This will level the playing field. There may still be players with slower connections or higher latency, but the situation will be better than it has been with a few players having faster connections and lower latency than the majority.

The work involved in optimizing the game, adding the pacing and emulation has been complex. This needs some testing before I can even commit to it. It's still experimental at this stage. If anyone wants to do some testing for me, you can use the sandbox game, or I will open a new game for you to use on the server.

That sounds outstanding!

H