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Lock-step simulation is child's play (experience report)

Authors:

Joachim Breitner,

Chris SmithAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 1, Issue ICFP

Article No.: 3, Pages 1 - 15

https://doi.org/10.1145/3110247

Published: 29 August 2017 Publication History

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Abstract

Implementing multi-player networked games by broadcasting the player’s input and letting each client calculate the game state -- a scheme known as *lock-step simulation* – is an established technique. However, ensuring that every client in this scheme obtains a consistent state is infamously hard and in general requires great discipline from the game programmer. The thesis of this pearl is that in the realm of functional programming – in particular with Haskell's purity and static pointers – this hard problem becomes almost trivially easy.

We support this thesis by implementing lock-step simulation under very adverse conditions. We extended the educational programming environment CodeWorld, which is used to teach math and programming to middle school students, with the ability to create and run interactive, networked multi-user games. Despite providing a very abstract and high-level interface, and without requiring any discipline from the programmer, we can provide consistent lock-step simulation with client prediction.

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Auxiliary Archive (icfp17-main24-s.zip)

Artifact: A virtual machine (VirtualBox/Vagrant box) with a running version of the CodeWorld server.

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Cited By

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Parizotto RMello BHaque ISchaeffer-Filho A(2022)NetGVTProceedings of the Symposium on SDN Research10.1145/3563647.3563648(16-24)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563647.3563648
Guigon GVermeulen MMuratet MCarron T(2021)Towards an Integration of the Multi-role Dimension in the Design of Learning Games: a Review of the LiteratureGames and Learning Alliance10.1007/978-3-030-92182-8_26(258-264)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92182-8_26
Pacheco HMacedo N(2020)ROSY: An elegant language to teach the pure reactive nature of robot programming2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)10.1109/IRC.2020.00045(240-247)Online publication date: Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00045
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Lock-step simulation is child's play (experience report)
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Distributed architectures
      1. Peer-to-peer architectures
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Functional languages

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 1, Issue ICFP

September 2017

1173 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3136534

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 29 August 2017

Published in PACMPL Volume 1, Issue ICFP

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Parizotto RMello BHaque ISchaeffer-Filho A(2022)NetGVTProceedings of the Symposium on SDN Research10.1145/3563647.3563648(16-24)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563647.3563648
Guigon GVermeulen MMuratet MCarron T(2021)Towards an Integration of the Multi-role Dimension in the Design of Learning Games: a Review of the LiteratureGames and Learning Alliance10.1007/978-3-030-92182-8_26(258-264)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92182-8_26
Pacheco HMacedo N(2020)ROSY: An elegant language to teach the pure reactive nature of robot programming2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)10.1109/IRC.2020.00045(240-247)Online publication date: Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00045
Almeida JCunha AMacedo NPacheco HProença J(2018)Teaching how to program using automated assessment and functional glossy games (experience report)Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32367772:ICFP(1-17)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236777

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Abstract

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Recommendations

Minority report: Computer Science skills perceived by students in different disciplines

Technology workshops by in-service teachers for pre-service teachers

Experience report: CS1 for majors with media computation

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