Problems of Decentralization

I once attended a presentation on military wargaming. The lecturer presented a tale that deserves repeating here. It seems that the military had built a huge networked system that allowed simulation of large combined arms operations. Officers at different bases all over the country, representing different services, could participate in a large simulated operation. The processing of each unit's actions was carried out locally, and then distributed to the other units across the country via the network. The simulation presented beautiful 3D camera views of any location on the battlefield. Our lecturer was presenting videotapes of some of those camera views.

Decentralized computing has many advantages to recommend it, but it also suffers from some difficulties. In this case, the operation being simulated was a beach landing on hostile territory, with Navy units providing the transport, Air Force units suppressing ground fire, and Marine units being ferried from Navy ships to the beach in big helicopters. Scores of virtual ships, planes, and helicopters, and thousands of virtual soldiers, all functioned smoothly together in an impressive demonstration until a Marine helicopter came in to land on a Navy ship. Just as it touched down and powered down its engines, the computer controlling the Navy ship suffered a glitch and dropped off line. The simulation, no longer aware of any Navy ship, presented the helicopter floating 50 feet above the surface of the water, with no power. It promptly dropped into the drink, losing all aboard.

A similar story arises from the pioneering Genie multiplayer air combat game Air Warrior. As the game evolved, Genie added more aircraft, including bombers that could be manned by large crews of players. However, a problem soon emerged: If the player piloting the bomber dropped offline, the bomber would slowly spiral into the ground, taking its frantic crew with it.



Chris Crawford on Game Design
Chris Crawford on Game Design
ISBN: 0131460994
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 248

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