Latency - how is this game possible?

[Sharky]

Question for the staff - With latency issues of today's networks, how is a game like this even possible? As a musician, I understand why timing is so important ... there has to be zero (0) latency for a jam style game to work. Otherwise, you will have people missing beats. How are you planning on dealing with latency and make this game feel laggless to the user?

[tmaynard]

I was wondering the same. Very good question. Can't wait to hear the response.<br>

[hmxsean]

I'll see if I can get you some answers on that.&nbsp; I know we are working especially hard to make that part work well.

[rspooky]

well frequency/amplitude(forgot*which*one*was*online) worked pretty well allready and that was on ps2 in*its*internet*infancy.*The*jam*sessions*were*coo l*on*that.*<BR/><BR/>hey that is a good question.. will we have jam sessions available?<BR/><IMG src="file/smile/wink.gif"/><BR/>

[Robert2879]

<p>Although I'm sure latency is going to be a tough issue to handle, I'm honestly curious how the interface will support an entire band in one location.&nbsp; If you have a singer, 2 guitarists and a drummer in front of one TV, it would be pretty tough to show all the right notes in a way that everybody can easily see.&nbsp; </p><p>No matter how it's done, I'm sure it's going to be lots of fun.<br></p>

[JohnBeauchemin]

<P>On the latency issue...is it really even an issue? I mean, all they have to really do IMO is make sure that the songs all synch on each persons console at the start. After that, all youre transmitting back and forth is whether or not someone missed a note, which isn't really super important for gameplay if theres a few ms of lag. And then of course, the score and stats at the end.</P>
<P>&nbsp;Course, that's just my narrow and no doubt ignorant opinion since I don't even know what theyre really trying to do.</P>

[Cutlass]

Hmm. I don't want to break my NDA, but that's what I'm responsible for testing, and I guess what I can say so far is it works well, and it's fun to play!<br>

[CoWmAn]

Here's the answer: GO play Amplitude/Frequency. Actually you'd have to go back in time to play them online, but they played very well online without much lag so it's possible and Harmonix know what they're doing.

[HMXWhitestar19]

<P>Short answer:</P>
<P>It is possible.</P>

[decoyoct]

Technical answer: They already patented the method http://harmonixmusic.com/abpatents.html Makes an interesting read. <br>

[CoWmAn]

<P>omgdecoywtfyouddidntcheckindoyouallofasuddennotlov eusanymore <IMG src="http://www.rockbandgame.com/file/smile/sad.gif"><IMG src="http://www.rockbandgame.com/file/smile/sad.gif"><IMG src="http://www.rockbandgame.com/file/smile/sad.gif"><IMG src="http://www.rockbandgame.com/file/smile/sad.gif"><IMG src="http://www.rockbandgame.com/file/smile/sad.gif"></P>

[DesktopMan]

<p>Lag in a game such as this is a non-issue. It's extremely easy to not have it at all, as events to not have to occur simultaneously, only played at the same time. As long as you know how much behind (or in front) the other players are, you can delay the local playback (this is not lag, it's just a time shift) to match it. Online music cooperation software has done this for years. End result: perfect game play.<br></p>

[Edgehopper]

<p>
Lag in a game such as this is a non-issue. It's extremely easy to not
have it at all, as events to not have to occur simultaneously, only
played at the same time. As long as you know how much behind (or in
front) the other players are, you can delay the local playback (this is
not lag, it's just a time shift) to match it. Online music cooperation
software has done this for years. End result: perfect game play.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>As far as getting your own good scores goes, lag isn't a problem because it can be staggered.&nbsp; But if I'm reading the Harmonix patents right, people playing online won't necessarily get to hear the whole band, because it uses a staggered setup where the earlier users don't get to hear the changes made by the later users.&nbsp; Example:</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Suppose it's staggered so vocals are first, then guitar, then bass, then drums.&nbsp; If I understand the patent correctly, the vocalist would hear the original track plus his own singing; the guitarist would hear the new vocals plus his guitar with mistakes, the bassist would hear the new guitar and vocal tracks, and only the drummer would hear everyone's changes from the original song.&nbsp; But that seems strange and not very good for the type of community band Harmonix is trying to set up online.&nbsp; I can't think of a good way to deal with lag other than that type of staggering algorithm, though.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Has Harmonix come up with a solution that doesn't require the staggering as above?&nbsp;</p>

[DesktopMan]

<p>What I described does not work as you said. I havn't read the patent (patents are usually written somewhat difficult), but timing continuous streams of sound isn't hard. I see no reason for someone not hearing&nbsp; someone else.</p><p>Start recording on all players. Immidatly send a stream to all other players, with a tag on where in the song this stream is. Then delay local recording until that time (usually only a sub 1 second delay) and start recording / sending yourself using the same method. This means that one player will be playing without any sound from the others in something like 1 second, but since all songs have intros he won't actually be playing alone as no one is playing. (but the "start tag" is still sent to sync up.)<br></p><p>Hope this describes a bit how it works in an understandable way.&nbsp;</p><p>It is possible that Harmonix will use a staggered setup where you don't hear other people's mistakes (or not all of them.) This would be a huge issue imo, and destroy the whole band concept, so I really doubt that's how they're going to do it.</p><p>I can see there's a problem in the staggering though, I really hope they make it work. I don't see a way to make it work for all players, so I'm guessing playing locally still will rock out the most :P<br></p>

[Vexinator]

I'll see if I can get you some answers on that.&nbsp; I know we are working especially hard to make that part work well.

hmxsean?Can i ask you a question?When does RB come to EU?

[shadebug]

you can't ask that question, or you can but he won't know

as for the OP

surely all you need is a stream saying whether the note's been hit or not. If memory serves when online you don't hear the drumfills or anything as the other person plays them so all that needs to be known is if the note's been hit or not and the game can fill in the rest.

[Dzhokhar]

hmxsean?Can i ask you a question?When does RB come to EU?

Why in the world did you bump a year old thread to ask an off-topic question?

[shadebug]

woah, I hadn't noticed how old the thread was. i was wondering why half the users ddn't exist anymore