Ever wondered how multiplayer games are coded?
I’m a professional multiplayer game programmer, and I do this stuff every day. Honestly, it’s not really that hard, provided you know the basic techniques. Problem is it’s difficult to find good information about game networking, and there is a lot of harmful info out there written by n00bs that will lead you astray.
So a few month ago, during my time off after shipping Mercs2, I started work on a series of articles called Networking for Game Programmers.
So far I have four pretty decent articles, with several more to come when I get the time to work on them. Ideally, over time I’d like to work all the way up from low-level networking to high-level, you know moving beyond the simple tutorials out there like “how to create a socket” (blergh)… How about, how to implement your own reliability and flow control on top of UDP – that’s more like it!
So if you are interested in game networking, and sick of reading about the basic stuff, why don’t you read have a read and let me know what you think!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
A very good set of articles that should not be overlooked. Also don’t miss the “Networked Physics” article, and particularly the discussion in the comments. Great stuff there.
Do you have other recommendations for network programming? Favorite books / links?
Very well written articles, one of the best available on the net concerning the subject. I can’t wait for the next ones, I’m very interested in which methods you use to sync state and events in nowadays physics-intensive games.