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Game Development vocabulary · Multiplayer & Networking

Client-side prediction

Meaning in game development, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In game development, client-side prediction means: A netcode technique in which the player's own device shows the result of their input immediately, before the server confirms it, and corrects it later if the server disagrees.

In Turkish: istemci tarafı tahmin, client-side prediction

How it is used

Used to hide latency so that movement feels instant. When a prediction is wrong, the correction is called reconciliation, and players may see rubber-banding: their character snaps back to an earlier position.

Example sentences

  1. Without client-side prediction, every step would feel 100 ms late.

  2. The rubber-banding happens on slopes, where our client-side prediction disagrees with the server.

Common collocations

  • server reconciliation
  • rubber-banding
  • lag compensation
  • input prediction
  • netcodeThe networking code of an online game that sends game data between players and servers and keeps everyone's view of the match in sync despite delays.
  • latencyThe time it takes for data to travel between a player's device and the server or another player, usually measured in milliseconds. High latency makes online games feel slow.
  • authoritative serverA server that has the final say on what happens in an online game: players send their inputs, and the server decides the real results, which makes cheating harder.
  • lagA noticeable delay between a player's action and the game's reaction, usually caused by a slow or unstable network connection, which makes the game feel jumpy.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Multiplayer & Networking

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