Discussion on Game That Does Networking

Discussion on Game That Does Networking

rbwhitaker 19 Feb 2014 21:16

I'm opening this thread as a place to discuss how we could pull off a game that requires networking for a challenge, specifically one where we're able to connect our games together.

Perhaps the idea is that in advance, we establish the protocols and everything that we would need to communicate, and perhaps build the server software in advance as well. It probably means that I'd have to put together my networking tutorials before this.

We're talking about an idea that's a long way out at this point. At least a few months out. I just wanted to put the idea out there, and get the discussion started.

(PiscesMike, RavenWhateverThoseNumbersAre, and I were talking about this in the chatroom. It seems like an interesting concept if we can sort the details out, so I thought this would be a good place for that.)

Re: Discussion on Game That Does Networking

Emblis 20 Feb 2014 09:58

So a joint venture, everyone working on the same game?

Re: Discussion on Game That Does Networking

rbwhitaker 20 Feb 2014 18:42

That would be the idea, or at least, everybody would work on their own client for the same game. On one hand, everyone who participates would be significantly more boxed in as far as what they choose to make. They'll have some flexibility in determining what their client will do (and perhaps even what their client will support). That's a definite drawback to this kind of approach.

On the other hand, it would be really cool to be able to work collaboratively to build something. It builds out people's resumes in ways that the current competition does not. So there are definitely some advantages as well.

There are a lot of problems that we would have to sort through before I'm willing to give it a shot myself. Some of these include:

• Everybody who wants to join is going to be at a different level in their technical knowledge and capabilities.
• We didn't have a whole lot of success with joint ventures before, when PiscesMike was doing Breakout and Asteroids. We only got successful when we made it a competition. This goes back to the cooperative mode with the added complexity of needing to pre-coordinate things in advance.
• Some people here have networking experience already. Many others do not. I probably need to put together some tutorials on networking before this can be viable, so people can learn it as they go.

There are probably more obstacles that we'd need to accomplish as well. If you can think of any, please help me list them. I think we need to have an understanding of what this would mean, and the problems we'd face, as well as some solutions for them before trying to do it.