There's a bunch of different ways of mitigating the effects of latency in online games. Everyone who has tried to make a networked game knows how it feels to be testing and running your game locally, where everything is smooth and crisp and instant, only to be tremendously disappointed when you go to play that inaugural multiplayer match and your enemy is skipping so fast you can't even follow him. With the Invasion Engine being built from the ground up as a networked game (even single player matches are actually connections to a local server) solving the issue of lag is very, very important. Having just finished the first successful test of our system for doing so, I'd like to talk a little about it. If you've ever been interested in how games like Half-life 2 (and all the Source engine games) counter lag, or if you're struggling with this same problem in your own project, read on.

Sorry to anyone who's tried to register an account recently. Sendmail on the NSR server was not running, and so no mail messages were being sent. If you tried to register an account and didn't get your email, please check your inbox, and if it's still not there you can have it re-sent here.

I got home from RIT last Saturday, and naturally, the first thing I do is stay up all night coding. I had a really fun 24 hours. Sean and Peter came over to have a cookout type deal, and then afterwards we transformed my dining room table into NSR Headquarters. Armed with 6 cups of coffee and an unlimited supply of hard boiled eggs, we stayed up until about 7:00 AM working on the Invasion Engine beta. Peter had prior engagements, but Sean and I (after a brief 5-6 hour nap) continued our campaign that culminated in about 1000 lines of new code.

Some of you may have noticed that NSR has recently undergone some major changes in website systems. Here are some things you should know:

• All the old data is gone, and we are starting from scratch. This means that you will need to register for a new user account.
• There are backups of the old data. If there is something you need from there, feel free to ask us.
• The site is powered by a system called Drupal 6.2, a content management system far more appropriate for our needs than PHPNuke.
• See also our Facebook page.

The Invasion Engine is a completely scriptable 3d game engine, suitable for first or third person shooters, strategy games, RPGs, etc, to be used in several upcoming NSR productions.