Rangoli is a slight variant of the traditional
Pictionary game, designed and implemented
for an online MSN Game show. It’s a
multiplayer game involving a single individual
graphically sketching out his/her interpretation
of an assigned word, while the other players
attempt to guess the word out of the shared
drawing that appears on their screens.
Though the game logic appears fairly simple,
designing and implementing its online version
has involved diligent efforts spread across
approximately 66 man-months. Owing to the
popularity of MSN game shows, system scalability
took top priority with the system being
capable of handling over 5000 users simultaneously.
This called for extreme care in terms of
robustness and efficient management of the
backend servers which were to run continuously
over long time periods.
The game involved sharing free-hand graphics
across whiteboards, each board displaying
the shared image on individual players screen.
In this situation, low latency times were
a must as the players can’t be expected
to wait patiently for the image to appear
on their screens while a single player sketches
on his/her whiteboard. Hence, the process
of exchanging image data was optimized such
that minimal data loss and time lags occurred.
Along with normal game-play, Rangoli also
has a chat module where players would chat
with each other over the gaming duration.
Microsoft Internet Chat (MIC) as the backend
communication channel and MS SQL Server
as the database management system formed
a strong technical configuration. The stable
and robust MS SQL Server very neatly handled
the huge database of words as well as user
data.
A team of 6 developers, 3 QA’s and
2 Managers worked towards implementing Rangoli
over its entire development phase of over
a year. Rangoli has been a first for ADI
in terms of handling large systems designed
to be extensive yet robust. In addition,
it has also helped us to establish a strong
rapport with the client, and in projecting
ADI as an online games developer.
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