Hello, most of my ''game'' is nearly complete, and Ive started thinking about the muliplayer experience and it seems worth coding. I have no idea what to write first, no idea. The client, or the server program...? I dont think networking my game would be too difficult if i had some idea where to start, the game is structured well and all the objects handle their own input. So I really need some help starting. I dont know much about network programing but id like to learn, and im tierd of readin i want to see something up and running. The client first or the server? and then what parts of each first. How do i test one without the other? help!!! thanks, kilj

Simple: You should start with both !!

First of all, code the connection requesting on the client, then get on your server files and code the accepting stuff. Then Code the receiving and writing stuff on both sides, and do some checks at each step.

Making a game multiplayer is very difficult, if you have never done a multiplayer game then start as a simple game (like Tic Tac Toe). It is hard to do a multiplayer part on an existing single player game, you should rebuild all your game by starting with the multiplayer part and then add the single player, if you don''t all rebuilds it, your game will be crap. Thrust me, I know what i am talking about, I have done that to one of my game and it doesn''t look good.

I think you should start by programming a command line ''chat-like'' utility. Set it up so you can send and receive data from a client to the server and vice versa. To do any sort of testing, you pretty much need to program them at the same time. What I like to do is have three directories for my code. One for the client, one for the server, and one for common include files. The common include files will help you by allowing you to change the structures that are being passed as network packets in a single place.

There''s a book from Prima Dev called Multiplayer Game Programming. It''s pretty good and has a bunch of examples. Their final code example I was able to use almost as is for a demo project I did. It wasn''t perfect, but it worked.

The anonymous poster probably has a good grasp on this though. If your game has any kind of real time system in it, incorporating networking into it after the fact is going to be difficult. Turn based games are much easier to drop in network code, but the multi-player aspect is a pain in the neck.

Microsoft has a utility that you can download to simulate network traffic. You run it while debugging applications and it handles the communications for you. I don''t remember the name of it, but I''m pretty sure it ships with the DirectX SDK as one of the DPlay utilities. It simulates a real network by adding in packet transmission delays, dropping random numbers of packets, and a couple of other things. I don''t think it simulates hacking attempts though.

Get that book though. That will help you a great deal. Good luck.

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Well, it sounds rough. Im up for it though, just gonna have to sit down, borrow my friends laptop so i can actually be on a network and try to get a little chat thing running over the weekend. Thanks for the help, coding both the client and the server sounds rough. Im gonna do some more reading on dplay. Its just ms uses so many funky little names that you have to memorize for everything... Anyway, thank you.

-kilj

FYI,

You don''t need two computers to test multiplayer game programming. You can launch both the client and server on one machine.


LostLogic
www.lostlogic.com
Author, Multiplayer Game Programming
Author, Strategy Game Programming with Direct X 9 (Not yet released)