Hi everyone!

I would like to introduce myself first, I am Steezy a gamer/former online admin staff at Garena. I am here to seek help and also to ask what kind of programming used in building gaming clients ? The client's main purpose is to connect online gamers via LAN but virtually/online. I've searched some in the web and some says it uses some kind of “socket layers” and also "packet sniffing" which I do think it is a programming terms. I do not have any knowledge in programming but I really want to build this kind of client as it really important as of now because the largest gaming client (Garena Inc.) and their famous LAN client shutdown many years ago and people wanted to play custom games are struggling to find better client similar to Garena.

Here is an example:

My account is (swpia.zen) and I am an admin of a “virtual room” that any player host a game there, and any player that finds games in their LAN list appear.

As what I have observed while I was still a staff, these were the function.

Normal Players Features

• Has a exp/level system
• Unique ID number (Which at first I think was kinda useless why there was just a bunch of random numbers although I found out that these are being used when you are become a channel admin. Since the ID system is unique that one user will have one ID and there will be no similar ID's
• Usergroup category(Normal Member, Gold Member, Premium Member)
• Can host games(although the game connection depends on the hosts internet provider meaning, if the host has better connection there won't be any lag or ping issue, while if the host don't have a better speed well lag spike, delays may occur.
• Chat System (private message)
• Country flag

Channel Admin Features (This was my current position)

• Has the access to the room's main function
• Can ban & kick players out of the room
• Can set password for the room so players need to type it before entering the room.

Super Admin Features (I have a friend that toured me to the office at Garena so I did manage to look and observed into this)

• Has the access to create,delete, or rename these “virtual lan rooms”
• Has the ability to add new admins on any rooms
• Has the ability to change any player usergroup.

Thank you for reading my proposal and I do hope someone could help me with this I mean I do not expect the exact client like garena but if anyone has the ability/capability to make a similar client like these please do chat reply on this thread or private message me here. You can also message me in the discord account Steezy#1111

Saying you know nothing about programming, but want to build a network client, is a bit like saying you know nothing about music, but you want to compose a full opera and have it played at the Met. It ain't gonna happen.

I would expect most people who come out of a 4 year Bachelor's computer science program to not be able to write the necessary low-level software to patch up game clients like a piece of software like that. Maybe 5% of the graduates would be able to, at least with the right mentoring and help. The rest will go somewhere between “eventually get enough experience and low-level knowledge” and “spend an entire career not being able to do this, instead focusing on other things.”

It's not that it's impossible. It's not that nobody exists who could do it. It's that all the levels of knowledge and all the skills you need to have to develop this, are highly specialized, build on top of poorly documented lower levels of the operating system, and also assume a lot of surrounding knowledge about not just networking details, but also how typical applications integrate with network software, how compiling/linking works, how operating system kernels work, and of course, how to develop a GUI application.

hplus0603 said:

Saying you know nothing about programming, but want to build a network client, is a bit like saying you know nothing about music, but you want to compose a full opera and have it played at the Met. It ain't gonna happen.

I would expect most people who come out of a 4 year Bachelor's computer science program to not be able to write the necessary low-level software to patch up game clients like a piece of software like that. Maybe 5% of the graduates would be able to, at least with the right mentoring and help. The rest will go somewhere between “eventually get enough experience and low-level knowledge” and “spend an entire career not being able to do this, instead focusing on other things.”

It's not that it's impossible. It's not that nobody exists who could do it. It's that all the levels of knowledge and all the skills you need to have to develop this, are highly specialized, build on top of poorly documented lower levels of the operating system, and also assume a lot of surrounding knowledge about not just networking details, but also how typical applications integrate with network software, how compiling/linking works, how operating system kernels work, and of course, how to develop a GUI application.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. I do believe it is possible to create a similar client like this as I read someone did already single-coded a game lan client from scratch although the client which he created didn't last for long time due to lack of players and financial support.

As I have mention, I do not really expect to create a similar client like garena since it is very hard and complex to create the same as garena client, but I do seeking for help to someone who knows and have great knowledge in creating virtual lan network that would be able to connect online players and to be able to play LAN games.

I also want to add that everything I listed about the features of the client aren't really necessary for you to do. Since the most important part that I really need help is the virtual LAN connection so that players will be able to play with other online players via LAN.

I get it! You want one of the people who could develop this, to develop this for you, even though there's already at least two proof points that you can't turn this into a profitable business.

That's unlikely to happen unless you are prepared to write a check with many trailing zeros (and at least one non-zero leading digit.) People need to eat. People with skills have many options for what they work on, and tend to work on things that have a chance of making money, or something that's their own pet project, not someone else's.

Maybe the better thing to do is to wonder why this business model doesn't work, and why players don't need it. Maybe the other networked clients and games that already exist, are the better, more popular solutions? If I can already play one of 100,000 games with my friends on Steam, and all of the game consoles have good game networking, then maybe that's what most people in the world actually wants?

If you manage to find someone, then good for you. I am in some groups where there are about 20 people in the world who share the interest, and our hobby costs thousands of dollars. It's totally possible to build a small community with enough effort and determination, if what you want is shared by at least some other people. Best of luck with your search!