Hi, I'm programming a multiplayer top-down shooter in Java and I have the game working on single-player. ie. Your avatar can go around and shoot walls as there's no one else to shoot. So now I'm looking for a good book to get me setup for making the game multiplayer. I want it to be pretty comprehensive, preferably going step by step in making an engine. Some things I'm looking for would be: -MUST USE JAVA. This is a must for me. -Networking fundamentals. eg.What's a socket? -TCP/IP and UDP stuff. -Dead Reckoning and other anti-lag measures -Collision Detection in the face of ping. -Server and Client handling. -Maybe..anti-cheating measures? but this is not that essential Thanks a lot for your suggestions. PS. I bought Game Programming in Java by David Brackeen and it has a chapter on multiplayer games. I'm reading through it now, but it doesn't seem to be in-depth enough for me. Any thoughts?

The following book is must for any network developer's library:
Unix Network Programming. It provides fundamentals for network/socket programming (applies to Win32/Mac as well as Unix).

For Java specific books, try www.amazon.com and search for "Java network programming" (many books to choose from).

Do you know of any books that deal with multiplayer games specifically? or in-depth?

I've heard of lots of techniques specifically for fast action games that really aren't used anywhere else and I want to learn those. Like dead reckoning, and using UDP to update position information.

Check out the Game Programming Gems series (read the TOC's for each book). Each book has network/game programming elements.

See also Massively Multiplayer Game Development.

I also suggest that you study existing (free) network game libraries to see the scope of what is required for a network game.

David Brakeen's book Java Game Programming should have what you are looking for.

You can also check out Java Programming Techniques for 2D, 2.5D, 3D, and Network Games
by Dr. Andrew Davison
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg