An Architecture for 2D Game Streaming Using Multi-Layer Object Coding

Advances in cloud computing have enabled systems where the game logic and rendering are processed on a server and streamed to a thin client. Meanwhile, there are still many challenges to provide games through the cloud without latency issues. This work proposes a novel technique to reduce encoding times and bandwidth usage on cloud gaming systems. We propose LACES (LAyer Caching gamE Streaming), an API that separates 2D game objects into multiple layers and allows the cloud server to encode and stream only modified parts of the frame. Using our technique, we managed to reduce the encoding size on the server by 99,79% and the average streaming size to the client by 96%, with no changes to the video quality or resolution and with no noticeable user input delay.