Asynchronous Gaming

“It is difficult to hold the world’s interest for more than half an hour at a time…” – Salvador Dali

The 7th highlighted update we’re talking about for Saito Summer is asynchronicity in the game engine and new and improved in game clocks; each satisfy an opposite need.

Asynchronous Gaming

Asynchronous Gaming is a general term to describe the ability to support secure P2P game play even if some peers are offline. For the user, the benefits are simple: you no longer need to remain online for the duration of a game, and you can now play multiple P2P games at once.

This is a feature users expect, regardless of the architecture underneath, but it represented unique challenges given Saito’s advanced game engine. Nevertheless, today’s version of the game engine now accommodates a far more general set of experiences, makes less assumptions, and removes unnecessary restriction.

Async invites (for supported games) allow your opponents to begin making moves before you even come online. Players are no longer required to keep a game open to play it, letting them use other apps like Red Square, play other games, or whatever they like between moves. We invite you to play async and share any feedback.

Decentralized Clocks

Again, if Saito were a Web 2 system, it would be easy to take for granted the nuance involved in a coherent, P2P clock system. Still, this is yet another feature gamers, especially competitive gamers, expect.

Clocks have existed in Saito Games for a long time, but this update shores them up with a new system capable of keeping each players’ clocks in sync with the others and UI improvements to display this information. The new system also patches certain exploits which allowed players misrepresent their remaining time.

Without the support of a central server, you can now play tightly-timed turn-based games similarly to in-person competition or premium sites like Chess.com. This brings the feature-set of a purely public and P2P Arcade (the only blockchain project working on this tech) up to the standard of private, centralized, closed-source services. Saito is Web 3 without compromises.

“I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.” – Magnus Carlsen

With this update very long games, taking place over the course of days or weeks, or very tightly-timed competitive experiences gain support from within the Saito Game Engine. Developers and users alike should find much utility out of these improvements.