DRTS Web App - Play with Other People

The first implementation of DRTS came in form of a windows application. While the windows app did its job, I felt uncomfortable with the bottleneck resulting from depending on windows as a platform. To lower this barrier, I started developing a version to run in web-browsers. The web app has come a long way since then, offering an interactive tutorial and playing with bots.

The update released today expands the web app by support for playing with other people online.

To play the game, head over to play.drtsgame.com

Starting today, the web app there also offers to join another player for a game.

The video below demonstrates the new feature, using two different web-browsers:

Under the Hood - Rendering Efficiency and Visibility Changes

Also with this update, visibility of the game world is changed in several ways:

• The computation of visibility is reimplemented using a new algorithm to be more efficient in common scenarios. This change drastically improved frame rates in Firefox, Edge, and Chrome.
• Symmetry for view propagation along edges: With the new algorithm, visibility is changed for symmetry between pairs of nodes. This means that viewing along an edge always works in both directions, regardless of the travel direction of the edge.
• When the game is over, the complete game world is revealed to all players.