Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7. Building Multiplayer Games
This is it—the final chapter. Here we explore a whole new branch of games program-
ming—networking. We will be talking about exchanging data between devices across a
network. That might be a local network or a network connecting the opposite sides of the
Pacific Ocean. This is particularly useful in games where we want to achieve a multiplayer
experience across different machines.
However, as was mentioned in the previous chapter, you will not find in-depth explanations
of the concepts behind network programming. This chapter covers the SFML networking
module of SFML and its connection to commonly used architectures for network games
programming, such as client-to-client and client-server.
In this chapter we will cover the following topics:
• Understanding networking
• The Transport layer—TCP versus UDP
• TCP with SFML
• UDP with SFML
• Exchanging packets
• Putting it all into practice
