Hello, I''m brand new here to to the forums, but hopefully you''ll bear with me. First, I wasn''t sure whether to put this into the beginner forum or leave it here. I''m currently attending Full Sail and for our final project I am responsible for the UI and networking. So I have a question on synchronization of a timer/rand function in a networked game. The game is a RTS game with multiple players using streaming sockets. My group and I were thinking of making it a client-server architecture, because it seems like the easiest way to go in regards to the networking and command execution aspect of it. The project hierarchy is broken down into the following... A command processor in the game will take in commands issued by the user and based on the time of execution will execute them. If this is a network game the command will be propagated to the server, and then sent to the clients. The problem with this are apparent in regards to having a timer that is synchronous between the clients in the server. Is there an easy way to get the timers on the clients and the servers within a couple milliseconds of each other? I was thinking of an iterative process, but I want to hear what you think of what options I have in regards to this. The other problem is that when the commands are executed how will I ensure that they will have the same rand value. The alternative to this is that all the commands get executed on the server and the results be sent to the clients, however that leads itself to an entirely different command architecture for the clients which I would like to avoid if possible. So what do you think about the command architecture, do you have any help on the synchronization issues or any other comments/suggestions of the project in general? Thanks!

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010322/terrano_01.htm