Game client, game server, Web application server, and database server including database with data representative of a virtual world. Game client or server, or both, includes motifs, motif manager, character manager, scenes-a-faire manager, and display manager coupled to display, all in communication with game manager, and pseudorandomizer, which can instigate changing of a motif. Motifs are representative of a game character or environment. A user interface has mass sensor, accelerometer, haptic device, first device for visual input, output, or both, second device for audio input, output, or both, and tactile sensor, effector or both. Included may be automatic translator, or TTS/STT module. The online game can be virtual world representative of at least two of a northern continent, a western continent, a southern continent, a central continent, and an eastern continent. Methods provide game client, game server, and a database that manipulate character or environment motifs and scenes-a-faire.

A system and method are described below for encoding interactive video used in video games streamed from a server to a client. For example, one embodiment of a computer-implemented method for performing video compression, and detecting a maximum data rate of a communication channel between a server and a client. The method includes transmitting a video stream comprising a series of compressed frames from the server to the client. The method includes detecting that the maximum data rate will be exceeded if a particular frame or frames of the sequence of frames are transmitted from the server to the client over the communication channel. The method includes reducing the frame rate of the video stream by adjusting compression of the video frames being sent from the server to the client to avoid exceeding the maximum data rate.

Game client, game server, Web application server, and database server including database with data representative of a virtual world. Game client or server, or both, includes motifs, motif manager, character manager, scenes-a-faire manager, and display manager coupled to display, all in communication with game manager, and pseudorandomizer, which can instigate changing of a motif. Motifs are representative of a game character or environment. A user interface has mass sensor, accelerometer, haptic device, first device for visual input, output, or both, second device for audio input, output, or both, and tactile sensor, effector or both. Included may be automatic translator, or TTS/STT module. The online game can be virtual world representative of at least two of a northern continent, a western continent, a southern continent, a central continent, and an eastern continent. Methods provide game client, game server, and a database that manipulate character or environment motifs and scenes-a-faire.

A communication system includes a group setting means, a first communication means, and a second communication means. The group setting means sets groups such that each of devices belongs to one of first-type groups, and to one of second-type groups. The first communication means enables, in each of the first-type groups, each of devices belonging to a first-type group to send its own data to other devices belonging to the same first-type group as the device. The second communication means enables, in each of the second-type groups, each of devices belonging to a second-type group to send its own data and data received from other devices belonging to a same first-type group as the device, to other devices belonging to the same second-type group as the device.

A game packet delivery method and a game packet delivery system are provided. The method includes executing a game program by a user device; and transmitting at least one game packet related to the game program between the user device and a game server via a telecom server and a shared router in response to the execution of the game program. The shared router belongs to a decentralized network node, and the transmission of at least one game packet does not involve any server provided by cloud service providers. Therefore, the efficiency of transferring game packets between the user device and the game server can be improved, thereby improving the game experience of the end user. Besides, because the transmission of game packets does not go through the backbone network of the cloud service providers, it can also ensure the privacy of online games for users.

A method for using a distributed game engine includes receiving a request from a user account via a computer network to play a game, identifying processing power assignment for the user account, and determining node assembly for the user account to utilize two or more processing nodes for the play of the game based on the processing power assignment. The method further includes initializing the two or more processing nodes for execution of the game for the user account. The operation of initializing is performed to set up a transfer of processing code for the game from one processing nods to another processing node. The method includes defining an internal communication channel between the two or more processing nodes for exchange of state information of the game. The exchange of state information is performed to enable shared processing of the game by the two or more nodes.

An apparatus includes one or more servers of a hosting service center operable to execute video game for one or more users remotely located from the hosting service center. The execution of the video game on the one or more servers produces uncompressed video of 3D animation. The one or more servers are operable to integrate live video with the video game such that the live video appears within the uncompressed video of 3D animation. The live video is received at a hosting service center from one or more client devices correspondingly associated with the one or more users. The uncompressed video 3D animation is generated, at least partially, using data streamed from a high-speed storage unit of the hosting service center coupled to the one or more servers. The high-speed storage unit is configured to load geometry for efficient loading and rendering of objects of the 3D animations. A compression unit compresses the uncompressed video 3D animation integrated with the live video, and compressed streaming interactive video being produced therefrom. An outbound routing network device coupled to the compression unit that transmits the compressed streaming interactive video over a packetized network to the one or more users.

A highly scalable cluster of computing nodes simulates large numbers of objects interacting in a space defined by an octree of cubical elements. Each cube of the octree is enclosed within a corresponding padding sphere. Interacting objects are quickly identified by determining which of the padding spheres are candidate spheres that satisfy an interaction criterion, considering candidate objects located in the cubes that correspond to the candidate spheres, and determining which of the candidate objects meet the interaction criterion. The computing workload can be efficiently parallelized among nodes of the cluster by assigning the objects to the nodes in approximately equal numbers, each node being responsible for managing the objects assigned thereto. Inter-node data traffic can be minimized by reassigning frequently interacting objects to the same node. The cluster can be scaled simply by adding more nodes to the cluster, and redistributing the objects equally among the nodes.

A method for using a distributed game engine includes receiving a request from a user account via a computer network to play a game, identifying processing power assignment for the user account, and determining node assembly for the user account to utilize two or more processing nodes for the play of the game based on the processing power assignment. The method further includes initializing the two or more processing nodes for execution of the game for the user account. The operation of initializing is performed to set up a transfer of processing code for the game from one processing nods to another processing node. The method includes defining an internal communication channel between the two or more processing nodes for exchange of state information of the game. The exchange of state information is performed to enable shared processing of the game by the two or more nodes.

Systems and methods for distributing an image file and a plurality of data chunks in a video game development environment include at least one game studio that has a plurality of client computing devices and at least one cache node in data communication with each other over a first network local to the at least one game studio. The plurality of client computing devices are in data communication, through the at least one cache node, with remotely located metadata and object storage servers over a wide area network. The image file includes a manifest of one or more game files and of the plurality of data chunks. The image file is referenced by a hash of data indicative of the image file while each of the plurality of data chunks is referenced by a hash of data indicative of each of the plurality of data chunks.