Rampaging Connections

            King Arthur’s Gold is a multiplayer only game where players build castles, tools and vehicles of war before setting to hacking each other apart.  Gameplay is divided into two parts, during the first players are restricted to their half of the map and are able to mine and build to their hearts content. The second part of gameplay releases the players from their isolation and commences the hacking and slashing, however the players are still able to mine and build.  The ability to build and use explosives adds another level of interaction to the game since all terrain is destructible.  There are a variety of game modes but all of them pit two teams against each other.

King Arthur’s Gold uses UDP for game connections and communicating with clients, however it uses TCP for automatic updates, API server communication and remote administration.  The distinction between running a server while playing which uses UDP and remote administration which uses TCP is something I find interesting, since remote administration consists of running a server but not playing on it.  The networking model for King Arthur’s Gold is inspired by Quake 3, though it differs in its ability to handle the large and variable number of objects in King Arthur’s Gold.

King Arthur’s Gold does on occasion suffer lag, however it does not have a greater issue with lag than most other games do.  The lag that I have encountered while playing King Arthur’s Gold seems to be mostly due to local computer issues. Most reported instances of lag that are reported by the player base also seem to be due to local computer issues rather than connection protocols or game code issues.