Networking for Multiplayer Games Where to start?

[NYGhost]

Hello All

I've done some openGL coding and I'm happy with the stuff I've learned so far even though I keep on learning something new every day.

Seems like future of games is moving to online multiplayer, and I want to try getting started with some network programming for games.

Questions:
Where do I start?
Is there a library to handle networking?
Any website links?

Thanks for your help
:)

[GoodDoug]

Where do you start?
Learn basic sockets programming, write a very simple networked "Hello World" program where the server sends a "Hello World" string to any client that connects to it. Once you've done that, the rest is algorithmic.

Is there a library to handle networking?
There are tons, none are good enough or general enough to be better than what you can write using sockets. If you are really afraid of all of that stuff, take a look at CFNetwork and all that jazz. But be warned that there are some strange bugs lurking in CFNetwork.

Website links:
MacDevCenter had an okay tutorial in their Rendezvous chat example that gave some good information.
Everyone seems to love http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/guide/net/html/
For books, the Stevens book is the bible, and I also liked the small "Practical Sockets Programming with TCP/IP"

[Skorche]

Once you learn sockets. You'll need to know how to implement it in your game. Take a peek here (http://www.idevgames.com/component/option,com_weblinks/task,view/Itemid,4/catid,35/id,16/).