Abstract

The Roum Multiplayer Protocol is designed to let multiple clients share game state information via a single central server.

The protocol is designed in a way that allows users to easily host their own servers on any semi-powerful computer. The standalone server does not need any graphical libraries and can thus run on headless server machines.

Central Server Design

A central server design was chosen for security reasons, because only the central server has to be trusted. This means that all player data is stored on the server. If any data is to shared with other players, it must first go through the central server. One of the disadvantages of this design is however that scaling to very large (100+) players on a single server becomes difficult without very powerful and thus expensive server machines.

Security Considerations

The protocol specification is designed to be secure in a way that tampering with connections or stealing the identity of clients or servers should be nearly impossible.

Additionally, since the protocol will usually be implemented in Python, common attacks used on C/C++ based architectures are not possible. This assumes that Python itself does not have any unknown security vulnerabilities.