The General Variables Concept: A Simple Step from Single- to Multi-user Environment

When implementing multi-user cooperation systems in networked virtual environments, synchronizing local representations of shared virtual world has to be considered. It involves distributing and storing the data that represent users’ activity in the virtual world. In this paper we propose a concept of general variables, which formalizes the task of distributing, journaling and locking the data in the client-server model. To verify the employability of the concept, we have implemented a Java bundle comprising a server and a client-side library. Four multi-user applications are presented to demonstrate that with the help of the bundle, a single-user application can be turned into multi-user one with m