Lockstep protocol (original) (raw)

The lockstep protocol is a partial solution to the look-ahead cheating problem in peer-to-peer architecture multiplayer games, in which a cheating client delays their own actions to await the messages of other players. A client can do so by acting as if they're suffering from high latency; the outgoing packet is forged by attaching a time stamp that is prior to the actual moment the packet is sent. To avoid this method of cheating, the lockstep protocol requires each player to first announce a "commitment" (e.g. hash value of the action); this commitment is a representation of an action that: