Two minutes later, the priest character's network status turned green again.
The player reconnected and took seamless control of the character.
Sato Hideki stared at the screen, took out a notebook, and quickly jotted things down.
A Sega hardware engineer proposed an idea: "The takeover mechanism on the software level is very complete. But what if we add a dedicated hardware buffer to the console's network module? The instant it detects that the physical connection has been severed, the hardware first sends the server a specially encoded 'disconnection warning' command packet, with that packet set to the highest priority. The server wouldn't need to wait thirty seconds for a timeout. It could take over the character immediately and save the party's waiting time."
Mark's eyes lit up.
"That line of thinking works." Mark walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew a simple topology diagram. "Right now, the software side determines a disconnect by relying on heartbeat packet timeouts. If the hardware can actively report a disconnected state, response speed will rise by an order of magnitude. This will require you to add this logic to the client."
"Not only that," Sato Hideki added. "This mechanism still needs to be something players decide whether to enable based on how stable they think their own network is. We only provide suggestions and prompts. That way, players with poor networks can, to a large extent, protect the game experience of companions they value, while players who are more confident in their networks can ensure they have a more complete sense of participation."
The atmosphere in the conference room grew heated.
Silicon Valley Online's programmers and Sega's hardware engineers gathered around the whiteboard and began discussing ways to implement various plans.
Simply reading reports would never produce this kind of result.