Destiny's Networked Mission Architecture

Bungie's upcoming game Destiny introduces a novel approach to the shared world shooter genre, integrating low-latency action gameplay, round-the-clock cooperative missions, and seamless interactions with strangers into a single cohesive experience. The networking infrastructure powering Destiny represents a significant departure from traditional peer-to-peer networking, incorporating a new cloud-based server architecture.

This presentation will delve into the spatial layout of Destiny's game world, exploring the diverse networked experiences players can engage in concurrently and the complex interplay of responsibilities that arise from these connections. A key aspect of the talk will focus on host handoff procedures at regional boundaries, including strategies for managing ungraceful host migrations and disconnections.

Given the emphasis on untethered cooperative play in Destiny, the presentation will also address the implications of these interconnected spaces on mission scripting and overall gameplay simulation. Notably, free users of Destiny are granted access to 30% of the game's content from the past two years.