Have you noticed that you’ve been jumping into ROBLOX games quicker? That’s because our networking team has been hard at work exploring ways to make our network more stable, secure, and most importantly, fast. After a ton of experimenting, we’re pleased to report that our network is the fastest it’s ever been–our data is faster and its footprint is smaller, and we’re continuing to make tweaks and enhancements. We tapped ROBLOX Software Engineer Yunpeng Zhu to tell us how we got there.
Dictionary.com defines “interpolate,” in mathematical terms, as inserting, estimating, or finding an intermediate term in a sequence. As dry as it sounds, it’s the reason objects are moving more smoothly in ROBLOX. Software Engineer Yunpeng Zhu is here today to explain how he improved ROBLOX’s physics interpolation, and to share some telling video evidence.
Anytime you take a video game online, there will be latency. The trick, for ROBLOX and other game developers, is to find efficient ways to manage the latency and keep players from perceiving it as lag – a freeze or slowdown in gameplay caused by a break in the flow of information between server and player.
Continue reading