8 research outputs found

    Prevention vs detection in online game cheating

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    Abstract. Cheating is a major problem in online games, but solving this would require either a complicated architecture design, costly third-party anti-cheat, or both. This paper aims to explore the differences between preventive and detective solutions against online game cheating. Specifically, it explores solutions against software-based cheatings, what kind of cheats there are, and what proposed and implemented solutions there are. This paper was conducted using literature reviews as methodology, using relevant papers from databases such as ResearchGate, ACM, and IEEE. In this paper, it was concluded that a good prevention strategy during the game development phase is adequate to mitigate and prevent cheating but will require appropriate anti-cheat software to maintain fairness during the lifetime of the game. The importance of an online game’s network architecture choice in preventing cheating became apparent within this paper after comparing the benefits of each type side-by-side. Results showed that peer-to-peer architecture not having a trusted centralized authority means that the game needs to rely more on an anti-cheat software to prevent and detect cheating. This paper could not conclude what an appropriate anti-cheat software is because the topic is outside of the scope of this paper and lacks public data. Still, it does raise the question of whether a more aggressive anti-cheat strategy is suitable for a game or not

    Network traffic characterisation, analysis, modelling and simulation for networked virtual environments

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    Networked virtual environment (NVE) refers to a distributed software system where a simulation, also known as virtual world, is shared over a data network between several users that can interact with each other and the simulation in real-time. NVE systems are omnipresent in the present globally interconnected world, from entertainment industry, where they are one of the foundations for many video games, to pervasive games that focus on e-learning, e-training or social studies. From this relevance derives the interest in better understanding the nature and internal dynamics of the network tra c that vertebrates these systems, useful in elds such as network infrastructure optimisation or the study of Quality of Service and Quality of Experience related to NVE-based services. The goal of the present work is to deepen into this understanding of NVE network tra c by helping to build network tra c models that accurately describe it and can be used as foundations for tools to assist in some of the research elds enumerated before. First contribution of the present work is a formal characterisation for NVE systems, which provides a tool to determine which systems can be considered as NVE. Based on this characterisation it has been possible to identify numerous systems, such as several video games, that qualify as NVE and have an important associated literature focused on network tra c analysis. The next contribution has been the study of this existing literature from a NVE perspective and the proposal of an analysis pipeline, a structured collection of processes and techniques to de ne microscale network models for NVE tra c. This analysis pipeline has been tested and validated against a study case focused on Open Wonderland (OWL), a framework to build NVE systems of di erent purpose. The analysis pipeline helped to de ned network models from experimental OWL tra c and assessed on their accuracy from a statistical perspective. The last contribution has been the design and implementation of simulation tools based on the above OWL models and the network simulation framework ns-3. The purpose of these simulations was to con rm the validity of the OWL models and the analysis pipeline, as well as providing potential tools to support studies related to NVE network tra c. As a result of this nal contribution, it has been proposed to exploit the parallelisation potential of these simulations through High Throughput Computing techniques and tools, aimed to coordinate massively parallel computing workloads over distributed resources

    A Systematic Mapping Study of MMOG Backend Architectures

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    The advent of utility computing has revolutionized almost every sector of traditional software development. Especially commercial cloud computing services, pioneered by the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have provided an unprecedented opportunity for the fast and sustainable development of complex distributed systems. Nevertheless, existing models and tools aim primarily for systems where resource usage—by humans and bots alike—is logically and physically quite disperse resulting in a low likelihood of conflicting resource access. However, a number of resource-intensive applications, such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and large-scale simulations introduce a requirement for a very large common state with many actors accessing it simultaneously and thus a high likelihood of conflicting resource access. This paper presents a systematic mapping study of the state-of-the-art in software technology aiming explicitly to support the development of MMOGs, a class of large-scale, resource-intensive software systems.By examining the main focus of a diverse set of related publications, we identify a list of criteria that are important for MMOG development. Then, we categorize the selected studies based on the inferred criteria in order to compare their approach, unveil the challenges faced in each of them and reveal research trends that might be present. Finally we attempt to identify research directions which appear promising for enabling the use of standardized technology for this class of systems

    Managing Network Delay for Browser Multiplayer Games

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    Latency is one of the key performance elements affecting the quality of experience (QoE) in computer games. Latency in the context of games can be defined as the time between the user input and the result on the screen. In order for the QoE to be satisfactory the game needs to be able to react fast enough to player input. In networked multiplayer games, latency is composed of network delay and local delays. Some major sources of network delay are queuing delay and head-of-line (HOL) blocking delay. Network delay in the Internet can be even in the order of seconds. In this thesis we discuss what feasible networking solutions exist for browser multiplayer games. We conduct a literature study to analyze the Differentiated Services architecture, some salient Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithms (RED, PIE, CoDel and FQ-CoDel), the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) concept and network protocols for web browser (WebSocket, QUIC and WebRTC). RED, PIE and CoDel as single-queue implementations would be sub-optimal for providing low latency to game traffic. FQ-CoDel is a multi-queue AQM and provides flow separation that is able to prevent queue-building bulk transfers from notably hampering latency-sensitive flows. WebRTC Data-Channel seems promising for games since it can be used for sending arbitrary application data and it can avoid HOL blocking. None of the network protocols, however, provide completely satisfactory support for the transport needs of multiplayer games: WebRTC is not designed for client-server connections, QUIC is not designed for traffic patterns typical for multiplayer games and WebSocket would require parallel connections to mitigate the effects of HOL blocking

    A Systematic Mapping Study of MMOG Backend Architectures

    Get PDF
    The advent of utility computing has revolutionized almost every sector of traditional software development. Especially commercial cloud computing services, pioneered by the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have provided an unprecedented opportunity for the fast and sustainable development of complex distributed systems. Nevertheless, existing models and tools aim primarily for systems where resource usage—by humans and bots alike—is logically and physically quite disperse resulting in a low likelihood of conflicting resource access. However, a number of resource-intensive applications, such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and large-scale simulations introduce a requirement for a very large common state with many actors accessing it simultaneously and thus a high likelihood of conflicting resource access. This paper presents a systematic mapping study of the state-of-the-art in software technology aiming explicitly to support the development of MMOGs, a class of large-scale, resource-intensive software systems.By examining the main focus of a diverse set of related publications, we identify a list of criteria that are important for MMOG development. Then, we categorize the selected studies based on the inferred criteria in order to compare their approach, unveil the challenges faced in each of them and reveal research trends that might be present. Finally we attempt to identify research directions which appear promising for enabling the use of standardized technology for this class of systems

    XXIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación - CACIC 2017 : Libro de actas

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    Trabajos presentados en el XXIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC), celebrado en la ciudad de La Plata los días 9 al 13 de octubre de 2017, organizado por la Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI) y la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

    Method and Technology for Model-based Test Automation of Context-sensitive Mobile Applications

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    Smartphone und Tablet Computer haben sich zu universalen Kommunikations- und Unterhaltungsplattformen entwickelt, die durch ständige Verfügbarkeit mobilen Internets die Verwendung mobiler, digitaler Dienste und Anwendungen immer mehr zur Normalität werden lassen und in alle Bereiche des Alltags vordringen. Die digitalen Marktplätze zum Vertrieb von Apps, sogenannten App Stores, sind Blockbuster-Märkte, in denen wenige erfolgreiche Produkte in kurzen Zeitintervallen den Großteil des Gesamtgewinns des Marktes erzielen. Durch dynamische, summative Bewertungssysteme in App Stores wird die Qualität einer App zu einem unmittelbaren Wert- und Aufwandstreiber. Die Qualität einer App steht in direktem Zusammenhang mit der Anzahl Downloads und somit mit dem wirtschaftlichen Erfolg. Mobile Geräte zeichnen sich gegenüber Desktop-Computern vorrangig dadurch aus, dass sie durch Sensoren in der Lage sind, Parameter ihrer Umgebung zu messen und diese Daten für Anwendungsinhalte aufzubereiten. Anwendungsfälle für solche Technologien sind beispielsweise ortsbasierte digitale Dienste, die Verwendung von Standortinformationen für Fahrzeug- oder Fußgängernavigation oder die Verwendung von Sensoren zur Interaktion mit einer Anwendung oder zur grafischen Aufbereitung in Augmented Reality-Anwendungen. Anwendungen, die Parameter ihrer Umgebung messen, aufbereiten und die Steuerung des Kontrollflusses einfließen lassen, werden als kontextsensitive Anwendungen bezeichnet. Kontextsensitivität hat prägenden Einfluss auf die fachliche und technische Gestaltung mobiler Anwendungen. Die fachliche Interpretation von Kontextparametern ist ein nicht-triviales Problem und erfordert eine sorgfältige Implementierung und gründliches Testen. Herausforderungen des Testens kontextsensitiver, mobiler Anwendungen sind Erstellung und Durchführung von Tests, die zum einen die zu testende Anwendung adäquat abdecken und zum anderen Testdaten bereitstellen und reproduzierbar in die zu testende Anwendung einspeisen. In dieser Dissertation wird eine Methode und eine Technologie vorgestellt, die wesentliche Aspekte und Tätigkeiten des Testens durch modellbasierte Automatisierung von menschlicher Arbeitskraft entkoppelt. Es wird eine Methode vorgestellt, die Tests für kontextsensitive Anwendungen aus UML-Aktivitätsdiagrammen generiert, die durch Verwendung eines UML-Profils zur Kontext- und Testmodellierung um Testdaten angereichert werden. Ein Automatisierungswerkzeug unterstützt die Testdurchführung durch reproduzierbare Simulation von Kontextparametern. Durch eine prototypische Implementierung der Generierung von funktionalen Akzeptanztests, der Testautomatisierung und Kontextsimulation wurde Machbarkeit des vorgestellten Ansatzes am Beispiel der mobilen Plattform Android praktisch nachgewiesen.Smartphones and tablet computers have evolved into universal communication and entertainment platforms. With the ubiquitous availability of mobile internet access, digital services and applications have become a commodity that permeates into all aspects of everyday life. The digital marketplaces for mobile app distribution, commonly referred to as App Stores, are blockbuster markets, where few extraordinarily successful apps generate the major share of the market's overall revenue in a short period of time. Through the implementation of dynamic, summative rating mechanisms in App Stores, app quality becomes a key value-driver of app monetarization, as app quality is directly associated with the number of app downloads, and hence with economic success. In contrast to desktop computers, mobile devices are uniquely characterized by a variety of sensors that measure environmental parameters and make them available as input to software. Potential uses of these technologies range from location-based digital services that use the user's location for vehicle or pedestrian navigation to augmented reality applications that use sensor information for user experience enhancement. Apps instrumenting physical and non-physical environmental parameters to control workflows or user interfaces are called context-aware applications. Context-awareness has a formative impact on the functional and technical design of mobile applications. The algorithmic interpretation of context data is a non-trivial problem that makes thorough implementation and careful testing mandatory to ensure adequate application quality. Major challenges of context-aware mobile application testing are test case creation and test execution. The impact of context-awareness on test case creation is the attainability of adequate test coverage, that in contrast to non-context-aware application extends beyond traditional input data. It requires the identification and characterization of context data sources and the provisioning of suitable, reproducible test data. This thesis addresses a method and technology to decouple test case creation and test execution from manual labor through the extensive use of model-driven automation technology. A method is presented that generates test cases for context-aware mobile applications from UML Activity Models by means of model transformation technology. A test execution framework facilitates the reproducible simulation of context data derived from an enriched system model. The approach is validated using a prototypical implementation of the test case generation algorithm. The simulation of context data during test execution ist validated using a modified implementation of the Android operation system
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