Communication Hub for Multi-Platform Game Development
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current video game development tools rarely communicate with each other and require specific knowledge of different video game platforms' communication protocols, making it difficult to develop games that run on multiple platforms concurrently.
Innovation Solution
A central communications hub application abstracts the knowledge of video game platforms and development tools, allowing them to communicate without requiring specific knowledge of each platform's protocols, by using platform communication libraries and client-side communications libraries to forward messages to the appropriate recipients.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If development tools use one-to-one connections with each game platform, then communication reliability is improved, but device complexity increases and ease of operation deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a central hub application as an intermediary component that receives messages from development tools and forwards them to the appropriate game platforms. This hub abstracts the complexity of multiple platform-specific communication protocols, allowing tools to communicate through a single standardized interface while maintaining reliable communication with each platform through the hub's platform-specific communication libraries.
2Adaptability or versatility
If development tools communicate with multiple game platforms, then adaptability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The central hub application serves multiple functions: it acts as a communication gateway to various game platforms, provides message routing, and manages platform-specific communication protocols. By making the hub universal and multi-functional, the system achieves platform compatibility without requiring each development tool to be configured for multiple platforms, thus reducing overall communication complexity.
3Speed
If each development tool manages communication sockets directly, then communication speed is improved, but ease of operation deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the socket management functionality from individual development tools and consolidates it into the central hub application. The hub handles all socket creation, maintenance, and closure operations, while tools simply send messages through the hub's standardized interface. This extraction maintains communication speed through efficient hub-managed sockets while significantly improving tool usability by removing complex socket management requirements.
Data Source
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AI summary
A video game development system for enhancing communications between development tools and video game platforms or running games. The system includes a communications hub module running on a computer or server and communicatively linked with first and second video game platforms to allow the communications hub module to forward messages to and receive messages from the game platforms. Memory accessible by the communications hub module stores communication data sets or libraries controlling communications with the game platforms. A video game development tool is provided in the system and is communicatively linked with the communications hub module, The development tool transmits messages formatted based on a client-side communications library defining communications with the hub module. The hub module receives the transmitted messages, generates game platform messages from the received messages based on the platform communication libraries, and forwards the game platform messages to the first and second video game platforms.