Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The PulseClient is what you would use to send updates from the player to the server,
which will eventually be sent to other players. The PulseCallback is an interface that
your game must implement to receive notification from the server. The following
screenshot shows the interaction in a graphical way:
implements
GameClientCallback
interface
MyPulseGame
Calls
GameClient
MyGame
Pulse Framework
PulseClient is one which your game code calls to log in: inform the server of the player
actions via add, remove, or update game state, request to make a friend, create a game
room; etc. PulseCallback is where you get notifications back from the server, such as
whether an action by the player was successful or caused an error. The interface also
notifies when a new room was created, a friend request was made, a player entered the
room, and so on.
The APIs can be broadly classified based on features as follows:
• System, such as login etc.
• Game room and lobby management, such as creating or joining game room.
• Game state management, such as those used during game play.
• Chat, for private and public conversations among players.
• Friends, for making new friends.
Summary
In this chapter, we downloaded and installed all the required IDE (FlashBuilder
4) and the SDK (Pulse) to help us start creating multiplayer games. We also test
ran the Pulse server and fired up some samples. We also discussed the high-level
architecture of a typical multiplayer game deployment. An implementation of a
simple client-server communication protocol was also presented, providing an
insight into how the messages can be sent and received between a Flash AS3-based
client and a Java-based server. In the next chapter, we will start to explore the
HelloWorld sample in greater detail.
