Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Friends
and
Chat
: Along with managing the players that the client may be
interacting with in a lobby or a game room, various other functions such as
keeping track of friends or handling chat messages are also part of a typical
game client.
With the use of a networked game client SDK such as Pulse, the services are
offered to the game developer as a set of APIs. This approach makes it easy
for game developers to focus on the game itself, rather than having to deal
with all the low-level implementation of the required services.
The overall structure of a multiplayer
game
Now that we have a general idea of what comprises a server and a client, let's shift
our focus on to the part where the game is actually implemented.
Like all software, games must be structured in order to handle their complexity. This
statement is especially true for an online game. A single player that gets shipped on
a CD or gets published on a website does not usually undergo subsequent revisions
once it's out. But in the case of an online game, the game code is very much alive as
long as there are players playing the game. For this reason, a well-structured game
implementation becomes even more important so when new features may be added
and bugs be found and fixed with ease without introducing new ones.
The main game loop
Almost all game implementation has a top-level game loop that starts at the
beginning of the game and breaks out when the game ends.
