Overcome latency introduced by VR’s use of WiFi in competitive multiplayer.
Written in collaboration with
Halfbrick Studios
Key Highlights
Thrill of the Fight 2, co-developed by Sealost Interactive and Halfbrick Studios, uses Edgegap’s ability to reserve a fraction of vCPU to deploy highly optimized game servers on the world’s largest, and only, regionless edge network with 615 locations worldwide. Minimizing its resource usage and cloud costs despite its ongoing popularity – proven by being top of the charts of META Quest Store’s multiplayer “most popular” section.
The Halfbrick Studios game uses Edgegap’s matchmaking system and Edgegap’s orchestration which deploys the game’s server closest to users to minimize latency by 58% on average (1).
As VR devices connect to WiFi for networking, heavily increasing latency at the source, Edgegap’s latency-reducing orchestration was critical in providing high quality server placement and a seamless boxing experience for VR.
The development team which created Thrill of the Fight series initially tested Edgegap on August 14th, 2023 aiming to add multiplayer to his initial release. More than 465 days later, Thrill of the Fight 2 launched to popular and critical success on META Quests devices. Over that period, more than 1,416 messages were exchanged on Edgegap’s Discord between the Halfbrick dev team and the developers at Edgegap – exchanging tips, insights, best practices and even improvement to Edgegap’s platform and products; highlighting Edgegap’s support availability.
The Studio
Ian Fitz’s Sealost Interactive released the initial Thrill of the Fight all the way in 2016 on Steam, riding the initial wave of VR headsets. For its next opus, which was developed together with Halfbrick Studios, it took its players feedback to the hearth – as he mentions “I’m in there every day, talking to fans, hearing what they think,” Fitz says. “They know what they want, and we’re listening to every suggestion, every bit of feedback.”
What they wanted was to experience the authentic boxing experience in multiplayer.
The Challenge
“Thrill [of the Fight] 1 was mostly about how fast you moved your controller. Now, the engine takes into account how you angle and guard, how well you’re timing your hits. It’s really like a new level for the genre.”
To make this happen, Ian and his team had to overcome arguably one of the greatest sources of latency in multiplayer – players’ use of WiFi for networking.
As unlike PCs or consoles, VR headsets are by design built to be wireless as to enhance the experience. This means that the majority of Thrill of the Fight 2’s players will use hardware that introduces a great deal of latency to the experience, all of which is impossible for the developers to solve at the game's level.
Enter Edgegap’s regionless game server hosting & orchestration.
The Solution
Removing latency introduced by devices using WiFi cannot be overcome by any product or services. It can only be accounted for in gameplay.
What game developers can, though, is to minimize the other sources of latency – namely, the network itself.
Edgegap’s game server hosting and orchestration is patented to deploy game server to the world’s largest, and only, regionless edge network. This allows Edgegap to deploy game server closest to players. As distance introduces latency, this deployment method is proven to reduce latency by 58% on average vs public cloud, and 28% increase in fairness.
As reported by TechRadar, whether the journalist was fighting against Fitz or Halfbrick Studios' founder Shainiel Deo in Brisbane, Australia, latency wasn’t an issue and the game ran at a smooth 120 frames-per-second.
Additionally, Edgegap’s platform and its matchmaking solution helped Ian and his team meaningfully:
Integration: Compared to traditional orchestration systems, Sealost Interactive's and Halfbrick Studios' developers saved hundreds of days of labor by integrating Edgegap in a matter of days.
Scaling: Edgegap scales up to 40 deployments per second for 60 minutes and provides just-in-time, on-demand game server deployment. When the game was featured by META on their Quest Store, this helped the game jump from 0 to thousands of deployments seamlessly.
Regionless Hosting: Edgegap caches game servers in all 615+ locations across the globe and then makes them available to the game's player base on demand. By preventing servers from being locked to a small number of areas, this guarantees an uncompromised online experience and spares underserved markets from a subpar experience
Pricing: Edgegap's no-commitment hosting enabled Sealost Interactive and Halfbrick Studios to align its resource and optimize cloud costs with the game's growing popularity without overpaying, thanks to the platform's pay-per-use hosting approach, which is completely in-sync with player demand.
Support: The infrastructure architecture of each game is different, and the Edgegap development team was a constant help throughout the integration process, helping Ian and his team and maximizing the speed of their game server to reduce compute and egress consumption. Long after Thrill of the Fight 2's initial release, this partnership continues with shared improvements, insights sharing and product development to better server the game.
Resiliency: Thanks to Edgegap's automated multi-cloud management, players of Thrill of the Fight 2 have had a consistent experience free from server disruptions.
Conclusion
The success of Thrill of the Fight 2 is a testament to innovative game development and infrastructure solutions. By leveraging Edgegap's regionless game server hosting, the game achieved a seamless multiplayer experience despite VR's inherent latency challenges.
"We love hearing what excites fans and geeking out over the little details with them," says Ian Fitz, creator of the series. "The Thrill of the Fight 2 is all about making sure every punch, every round, and every victory feels as real as it gets."
