Game State Preservation for Disconnected Users
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users participating in multi-user computer simulations, such as interactive electronic games, often experience connection losses or insufficient connectivity, leading to loss of their position, statistics, and inability to rejoin the game, due to issues like device failures or network disruptions.
Innovation Solution
The system detects connection losses and initiates a process to retain a user's game state and statistics, allowing them to rejoin the game by confirming their intent through alternative communication channels, ensuring minimal disruption and maintaining their position within the simulation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the system retains game state for users who lose connection, then user experience and game continuity are improved, but system resource consumption and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by detecting connection losses and determining game states before users attempt to rejoin. The server proactively identifies disconnected users, captures their current game state, and prepares rejoining mechanisms in advance, so when users reconnect, their state is already preserved and they can resume seamlessly without causing system overload at the moment of reconnection.
Solution Approach 2:
The server acts as an intermediary between the game environment and disconnected users. It maintains a buffering mechanism that stores game states for disconnected users and mediates the rejoining process by comparing states, validating user intent through confirmation requests, and seamlessly integrating users back into the game. This intermediary layer isolates the complexity from both the game core and user devices.
2Loss of information
If the system preserves game state for disconnected users, then user position and statistics are maintained, but network bandwidth and server resources are consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential game state information needed for rejoining (user position, statistics, and current game context) rather than preserving complete game data. The server selectively captures and stores minimal necessary state elements, separating critical preservation data from unnecessary information, thereby reducing network bandwidth consumption while maintaining game continuity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the state of game data from active real-time updates to a preserved static state during disconnection. By transitioning game state parameters from dynamic to static during the disconnect period, the system reduces the frequency of data synchronization and network traffic, consuming resources only when necessary for state determination and rejoining, rather than continuously maintaining active connections.
3Reliability
If the system requests confirmation from users before rejoining, then unauthorized reconnections are prevented, but additional communication overhead is created
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies preliminary anti-action by sending confirmation requests to disconnected users before allowing rejoining. This preemptive measure prevents unauthorized or accidental reconnections by requiring users to explicitly confirm their intent to return. The confirmation mechanism acts as a preventive barrier that validates user identity and intent before restoring game state, ensuring connection integrity while the time overhead is minimized through efficient confirmation protocols.
Data Source
AI summary
Several embodiments of the invention advantageously provide systems, apparatuses, processes and methods of providing an interactive electronic game. Some of these methods comprise: detecting a loss of connection over a distributed network with a first user remotely accessing and participating in an interactive electronic game in progress; determining, in response to detecting the loss of the connection with the first user, a game state associated with the first user; determining whether a confirmation is received from the first user confirming that the first user intends to rejoin the interactive game; and retaining, in response to determining that the confirmation is received, the game state.