I would like to know what the best communication method would be if you were going to send and recieve only small amounts of data to and from 8 to 20 other players. By best I mean the fastest and most efficient.
Examples of data:
Game map position, player bitmaps, in game chatting, etc.
Examples of methods:
TCP\IP and IPX\SPX
Thanx
Post: Richard Rice, 6/22/99 8:59:47 PM
Extreme Gamer,
Well it depends. If you are planning on making a turn based game such as Panzer General(SSI) or a card game like Spades you should go with TCP. But if you are trying to make a real-time game such as Red Alert (Westwood) or Quake(id) then I would strongly recommend using some variant of UDP. I wouldn't use UDP as it is, but would create/purchase some sort of wrapper that sits on top of UDP with little overhead. I like writing my own UDP wrappers specific for the type of game I'm creating.
Game chatting works very well with TCP, but if you are creating a real-time game you should push the chat communication through the game's UDP layer(note: make it low priority so it doesn't get in the way of more important data like missile position etc.)
Same goes for player bitmaps. Be sure to transfer these at times when there would be very little affect on the game action.
good luck,
-rich
Post: Extreme Gamer, 6/22/99 11:08:18 PM
I'm a beginner at making video games and so far I only know how to do 2D single player games (unless there is another player on the same keyboard.)
This is probably a really stupid question but what is UDP? And how do you program(like C++ or completely different?) and use it?
Post: Michael Tanczos, 6/24/99 4:13:01 AM
If you have to ask, you haven't done enough research into the subject. Keep that advice in mind and you'll always be satisfied. And if the time comes that you do have to ask, you'll find your answers to be much more meaningful.
Post: Jered, 6/24/99 10:52:34 PM
The UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is an unreliable datagram delivery protocol that is part of the IP (Internet Protocol) suite. Its purpose is to wrap up user data in a small and simple header so that they can be transferred over a network with the assistance of IP, routing protocols, data-link protocols, and physical network media. The UDP header contains information on what host a datagram came from and what host it's going to; that's about the gist of it.
To "program it" with C++ you need to learn about WinSock.
I recommend that you learn more about Internet architecture and read up on what you'll find called "TCP/IP" before experimenting with WinSock.
-Jered.
