Are WebSockets suitable for real-time multiplayer games?

Question

I\'m interested in building a small real-time multiplayer game, using HTML5/JavaScript for the client and probably Java for the server software.

I looked into WebSoc

Answer 1

Multiplayer games requires the server to send periodic snapshots of the world state to the client. In the context of a browser HTML/js application you have little choices: polling, websocket or write your own plugin to extend browser capabilities.

The HTTP polling such as BOSH or Bayeux are sophisticated but introduces network overhead and latency. The websocket was designed to overcome their limitation and is definitely more responsive.

Libraries, such as cometd or socket io, provide an abstraction of the transport and solve the browser compatibility issues for you. On top of that, it allows to switch between the underlying transports and compare their performance without effort.

I coded multiplayer arcade game with socket.io and usual measure 2ms latency with a websocket and around 30ms with xhr-polling on lan. It's enough for a multiplayer games.

I suggest you to have a look to nodejs and socket.io in order to be able to share code between the client and the server, you also car borrow some multiplayer code at [3].