Lockstep Protocol

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. 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 his own actions to await the messages of other players. A client can do so by acting as if he is 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.As all players must wait for all commitments to arrive before sending their actions, the game progresses as slowly as the player with the highest latency. Although this may not be noticeable in a turn-based game, real-time online games, such as first person shooters, require much faster reactions.