Midgame Issues

This article explains why midgame can sometimes occur and the best ways to prevent them from happening.

Midgame issues include but aren't limited to game balances not updating, upgrades not activating, and not being able to purchase powerups.

Issues like these happen due to something called packet loss.

During a Gimkit game, small packets of data are sent to all players of a game to inform them of their current state. These data packets include player's balances, which upgrade levels they are at, which powerups they own, and everything that changes over the course of a Gimkit game.

When packet loss occurs, some of these packets of data are lost between the sending from our server and the receiving on the player devices.

Packet loss can happen for a variety of reasons. Here are the two most common:

Slow Internet
Slow internet connections can lead to packet loss or an extreme increase in latency, which can cause game updates to take seconds to get delivered, instead of milliseconds. Gimkit uses much more bandwidth than a typical website since things are changing in the game all the time. Slow or unreliable internet connections may not be able to handle the increase in traffic and, as a result, will fail to deliver packets.

Network Congestion
Even if you have a fast internet connection, network congestion can lead to packet loss. This issue typically occurs with wireless networks. While wireless networks can provide high-speed internet, too much bandwidth running through it can cause it to overload. When overloaded, it will drop some messages to make room for others which is a cause of packet loss.

How to Prevent Packet Loss

The best way to prevent packet loss is to have a fast internet connection with all players connected to a wired internet source.

However, we know this is not usually possible.

If your school has decent cellular service, having students playing on mobile phones use their cellular data can help. Cellular data speeds are normally fast enough to handle Gimkit and taking more devices off school networks helps eliminate congestion.

If you have any more questions, please reach out!

Updated on: 25/01/2023