Back in 2012-2013, during my college days, I devoted six intense months to a deep dive into multiplayer Pac-Man and the intricacies of game netcode. My exploration covered everything from client-side prediction, server ticks, and WebSockets, to efficient message packing, game lobbies, region locking, and even the nuances of TCP/UDP packets and network congestion. It was an intense period, driven purely by obsession rather than explicit goals or deadlines. Eventually, I set it aside as life grew busier.
A decade later, around 2023, those specific learnings became invaluable while I was building Playroom. Playroom is an easy-to-use SDK for adding multiplayer functionality to games, offering features like multiplayer lobbies, matchmaking, unreliable (WebRTC) and reliable (WebSockets) modes, player and room states, RPCs, etc.
Today, Playroom effortlessly serves over 10 million monthly active users across numerous games.
This stands as a clear instance of how pursuing interesting, challenging work, particularly in its depths and without the immediate prospect of monetary reward, has greatly benefited me later in life.
These days I am in another deep-dive on SLAM systems for about year or so. You can see video demo and follow my progress on X. Again, no immediate rewards, some heuristics and pure obsession.