tickbased

Tickbased refers to a design or approach in which state progression occurs in discrete time steps, or ticks, rather than in continuous time. In a tickbased system, the main loop advances the simulation by advancing all components by a fixed time increment during each tick. The separation of time into ticks enables predictable updates and often simplifies synchronization in multiplayer environments or deterministic physics.

In practice, tickbased implementations use a fixed timestep, such as dt = 1/30 or 1/60 of a second. The program accumulates elapsed real time and performs one or more updates for each tick that fits into the accumulator. Rendering is frequently decoupled from the logic update, and may interpolate state between ticks to produce smooth visuals.

Uses and advantages: Tickbased design is common in video games, robotics simulators, and certain enterprise simulations because it yields determinism, reproducibility, and predictable resource usage. It also helps ensure that physics and AI behave identically across runs and machines if input is the same.

Limitations: The fixed-timestep approach introduces granularity, which can cause less responsive input handling at very low tick rates, or require interpolation and sub-stepping to maintain accuracy. In highly dynamic scenes, locking to a tick rate can lead to visible stutter or increased latency.

Related terms: discrete-time simulation, fixed timestep, game loop, real-time systems.

Notes: The term can appear in varying contexts, sometimes loosely equating to fixed-update loops or tick-based scheduling in distributed systems.