Ok, this is my first post in this forum, so if I forget to do something please tell me.

Short story: Im developing an indie game, with my own engine. Its a realtime game, the game tick is 60Hz. I currently developed an UDP network prototipe in which each player (supports only 2) sends the player input to the other. It works fine on LAN, and via internet inside my country (have not tested it with other people), however I had to introduce a bit of latency in order to get consistent frametimes.

1. Do you think this will scale up to 8 players, sending packets each other?

2. My engine is monothreaded, I could theorically separate render and game threads, and maybe I can reduce latency this way. What do you think?

3. Is there some p2p library that already support creating and joining games so that I can simplify the network game code? It is already a mess, and it works with only 2 players..

Thanks!

Starcraft 1 worked ok with 8 players via P2P. Ofc it was an strategy game where the game tick was much lower than 60Hz. But its pretty impressive how responsive it is, there is almost 0 latency, I dont know how they achieved that.

Based on that I choosed the P2P over client-server, and because I think its easier to implement, but looks like I will need to have a look at client-server.

Starcraft 1 worked ok with 8 players via P2P

I think your assumptions don't quite hold true.

First, in Starcraft, there is a host, so the topology is client/server.

Second, Starcraft also uses the lock-step simulation method -- similar to the "1,500 archers on a 28,800 modem" article that's linked from the FAQ. This also means that a tick rate of 5 or 10 Hz sends very little data, because only input commands are sent, and they're only sent to the host. (and then a single packet with data from all players received from the host.)

Third, Starcraft has very much latency. They are just good at hiding it. The "Yes, sir!" acknowledgement animation for each command is there to hide the latency of actually making the units move on every player's machines at the same time.

There are thirdparty plugins that allows players to set the latency to their needs. I have played a lot with it in the lowest latency mode, and a unit response is almost real time. These plugins are called "lan latency mode" or something like that.

My engine is also "lock-step" based, I only send player inputs in very small packets.