2004 RuneScape fit a multiplayer RPG into 56k dial-up

I wish the author got more into the weeds of anitcheat and how it evolved over time. Jagex was banning bots based on mouse movement heuristics in like 2005. 20 years later and there's some JS framework on the front page here heralding that same kind of analysis as some revolutionary new approach. I can only imagine what the modern anticheat engine entails, especially in the era of LLMs that can reliably emulate a human player. (Some of them can even write quite technical blog posts that almost escape detection ;)

Ultima online released in 1997 and required only a 28k modem.

I also would argue it was a more complex game.

Phantasy Star Online on the Sega Dreamcast worked great on dial up

Lineage 2 was launched in 2003 with a stunning 3d graphics.

Sphera is even older.

MMORPGs are super old.

> Before any networking occurs, the client runs a breadth-first search using the local collision map to build a path from where you are to where you clicked, and then writes the packet for the server to read. [...] The packet contains the absolute position of the first waypoint in the path, followed by the delta of each waypoint in the path against the first one

How come the client sends waypoints rather than just the destination? Naively it seems like sending less data would be better. Is the pathfinding so expensive that you'd want to avoid doing it on the server? I suppose it works out as long as it's cheap to validate/correct the client's path?

Is this article just an analysis of the Lost City[0] codebase without linking Lost City?

[0] https://github.com/LostCityRS

not to take away from the article, but some did with similar fidelity on 14.4k

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_massively_multiplay...

i think the author would find ultima online emulators interesting

I don't understand how RuneScape managed to get the traction it did. 2004 was the same year World of Warcraft came out!

HN: Stay in your lane!

You do not know video games.

And it shows lol these comments

I love how when Runescape gets posted on here, there’s always a few proud stories of how people cheated. Today one is even admitting to RWT (real world trading) for tens of thousands of $, when elsewhere one shuts up about it because cheaters in multiplayer gaming are regarded as the antisocial scum that make the game worse for everybody else. It’s not really something to brag about.

I guess one thing antisocial people lack is self-awareness.