Scenario: Realtime Multiplayer online Game

[janl]

What happens when one or more of the players drop or lag?

The remaining players are put on hold, but are dropped in a chat or other situation that allows them to engage with the game while waiting for the disconnected parties to return.

[ghost]

Humm, I guess it would depend on the game mechanics, but generally:

1 vs 2+ players — game continues, player is disconnected.
1-1: wait for reconnect, save game for later on connect timeout

Some sort of low bandwidth communication with the other party sounds interesting! It might be chat or just an indicator of online status/quality if possible. Proximity between players might have to be taken into account as sometimes you just have 2 strangers playing against each other.

Also: the game matchmaking algorithm might also decide which has higher priority: resuming the game or just getting the players into a new one with any other online player.