I apologize if you have received this or a similar note last week. I am writing to you to seek your help collecting data for our research project. The goal of this project is to develop a way of developing and supporting realtime peer-to-peer (p2p) interactive applications.
We need to collect enough data to submit a paper this Friday (2 Oct 2009) and we will be conducting our experiments over the next 4 days (28 Sep-1 Oct 2009) pretty much 24/7 to collect the data we need.
Our Project
While you might have heard about p2p in the form of file sharing applications like BitTorrent and perhaps VoIP apps like Skype, what we are trying to do is fundamentally different.
Our target application is a p2p game and unlike conventional networked games that require a dedicated server, our game is hosted by the players playing the game themselves and the game will continue to exist even if some of the players leave the system. Essentially, we have developed techniques to allow a server to fail over somewhat seamlessly when the peer acting as the server leaves the game.
Why our Project Matters
Our project is not about a game. We are trying to develop a fundamentally different way to write networked programs. If our techniques work, it will make it significantly cheaper to developed certain class of realtime interactive programs, like casual games.
It's quite a cute game in my view, and you're welcome to play it. However, we know that many of you are busy people and so we've made it even easier for you to help out. You don't even have to play the game yourself. Just click PLAY! to spawn the game window and check off "Automatically join and play games to level up" and the game will PLAY ITSELF! How simple is that? :-P Just let the program sit in the background and run. It's THAT simple!
(Note: if you get this grey blank window after you click on the PLAY! Tab, the Java VM installed in your browser may not be up to date, pls click http://www.java.com/en/download/ to update your Java VM and you should be good to go!)
The Experiments
Do note that the game will not be exactly the *real* thing over the next few days because we will be doing things like forcing some peers to fail, stress testing the system and collecting performance data. Occasionally if we push too hard, the games might also crash. Finally, because p2p involves quite a lot of handshaking at the networking layer, there might be some delays in connecting to the games. We ask for your patience.
Please be assured also that no personal data will be collected in our experiments. We will only be collecting data on network measurements to evaluate the performance of our system.
Please Get Your Friends to Help too?
While I do hate chain mails, we're a little short on time and data and I hope you can help us out by forwarding this note to your friends to get them to help us too! The next 4 days (28 Sep0-1 Oct 2009) is the most crucial period for us. Please do not forward this note after 1 Oct 2009.
Players from out of Singapore, i.e. UK or US, would be very helpful. If you have friends abroad, please persuade them to help us too!
