Top 4 Netcode Interview Questions
Browse 4 real-world technical and behavioral interview questions about Netcode. Review scenarios, edge cases, and architectural best practices.
How do you make a remote player move smoothly between server updates, and where does that smoothing visibly break?
You either buffer snapshots and render the entity slightly in the past so two updates always bracket it, or you dead-reckon forward from its last position and velocity. Interpolation buys smoothness with added latency; extrapolation buys latency with being wrong the instant the entity turns.
When would you choose deterministic lockstep over an authoritative server, and what does each model cost you?
Deterministic lockstep vs authoritative server is a trade-off between bandwidth and trust. Lockstep sends only inputs but waits on the slowest peer and risks desyncs; an authoritative server spends bandwidth on state updates but handles cheating, latency hiding and correction more cleanly.
Walk me through what rollback netcode does on a single frame, and what it costs to run it.
Rollback netcode predicts remote input so local gameplay never waits for the network. When the real input arrives, the client restores the saved state from that frame and re-simulates forward, trading CPU and correction artifacts for responsive controls.
How do you optimise UDP packet loss for a high-tickrate competitive shooter?
Analyse approaches to mitigating packet loss in a fast-paced UDP environment, focusing on forward error correction and redundant data.