http://www.opentnl.org/ I've been reading the code (data structures mostly) and am amazed at the thoroughness of the implementation. It has everything from Encryption to interpolation and ghosting all defined within it. (really cool). Question 1: How ubiquitous is this code? e.g. is it used by lots of companies and lots of games??? Question 2: What would it take to convince a game company to adopt OpenTNL? Question 3: Is there anything missing in OpenTNL that is common in network programming industry? p.s. Tribes and Tribes 2 use OpenTNL, and their network performane is legendary!!! why don't everyone use OpenTNL? Thanks, Harlan

Horses for courses. If you're making a casino/poker game, or a RTS, or a MMORPG, you probably have different needs and trade-offs than an FPS.

but wouldnt OpenTNL be suitable for any type of game, including the genre's you mentioned?

Quote:

Original post by graveyard filla but wouldnt OpenTNL be suitable for any type of game, including the genre's you mentioned?

For example, there's a big difference between a RTS and an FPS game in term of networking needs. On one side (RTS) you need an exact representation of everything on each computer (almost) although you don't need split second notification but you can't really live with a missing packet, which, on the other hand (FPS) is totally acceptable and you interpolate between the updates.

It's like the difference between a server base game and a peer-to-peer game. In my opinion there's no solution that fits all problem.

My 0.02 [insert currency],

Gizz

hi Gizz,

i completely understand that different genre's (and games) require different networking architecture. maybe im mis-understanding the OpenTNL library. i didnt think it was geared specifically towards FPS style games. in fact, i'd be surprised that it was.

assuming that OpenTNL is just a general high level networking library, i see no reason why one couldn't make a MMORPG or RTS or whatever they desired using the library.

Its not a real OPEN tnl if a liscence cost so much money. But i have had good experiances making a 2 player poker game, and a multiplayer space ship thing.

WOW, I didn't even know this existed. I'll look into it, oh yes!

What I don't like is that it also makes use of all sorts of macros... the DECLARE blocks, for example. I wonder why they couldn't manage it with multiple inheritance.

Ah,a lso on the GPL topic: GPL does lend itself to commercial use, it's just that most boneheaded publishers think source code is something worth protecting (which it's not, it's something worth showing around!).

graveyard filla, OpenTNL was originally geared towards FPS type games, as it's essentially the networking that powered Tribes 2.