How a browser strategy game solves networking without UDP or prediction

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A developer building Old Light, a multiplayer browser-based strategy game, has detailed the networking architecture designed for slow, long-running gameplay rather than real-time action. Unlike typical game networking that relies on UDP and client-side prediction, the game uses WebSockets with just two message types — a full world snapshot on connect and incremental delta patches thereafter. A key challenge was ensuring consistency at the boundary between connection and live updates, solved by buffering early deltas on the client and sequencing broadcasts carefully on the server. The developer also identified a subtle bug where resource counters double-counted income by pairing a freshly projected balance with a stale database timestamp, fixed by always anchoring projections to the moment they are calculated. The post highlights how slow-paced games face entirely different correctness problems compared to fast games, with bugs that can go undetected for hours rather than frames.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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