Networking

[David]

How do you do netcode that works in OS 9 and X without using Openplay? I just tried it for a while and decided it is not good for my project (slow, buggy, etc.)

[KittyMac]

OpenTransport (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/Open_Transport/) is a pain in the buttocks to use, but its the only thing which gets the job done on both OS X and OS 9 (IMHO).

Cheers,
Rocco

[OneSadCookie]

You may be able to find a socket layer which works on top of Open Transport but presents the standard interface. I think I saw such a thing at one point, but I don't know how good it was or what it was called...

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by KittyMac
OpenTransport (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/Open_Transport/) is a pain in the buttocks to use, but its the only thing which gets the job done on both OS X and OS 9 (IMHO).

Cheers,
Rocco


I would suggest open heart surgery before Open Transport.... less painful

[David]

Hmm... do you know of any good links to info about 3d netcode in general, or examples of Open Transport or Openplay in a real-time game?

[KittyMac]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010322/terrano_01.htm

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000511/bernier_02.htm

For an OpenTransport example, check out The Belt's source code from last year. It wrappers OpenTransport and WinSock calls for both UDP and TCP.

Finally, there was another gamasutra article which I remember reading but couldn't readily find. It was a postmortem for one of the StarWars flight sim games. One good point from that was to get around the unreliable nature of UDP, they send the past 10 or so UDP packets each time (so for the pcket which represent timestamp n they send n, n-1, n-2, n-3, etc all together). This way if one or two packets get lost the other computer can get them the next time it receives a packet without having to bug the client for a resend, etc... Neat idea, never tried it out myself.

Cheers,
Rocco

[OneSadCookie]

There's a good description of how Unreal Tournament's networking works... I found it just the other day and gave the link to someone on the chat room...

hmm.

ah, here:

http://unreal.epicgames.com/Network.htm