Game Development Community

Highly interested in Real time Networking.

by Glenn Thomas · in Torque Game Builder · 06/12/2008 (9:19 am) · 2 replies

I'm working on a title which is directly targeted at instantaction.com and the popular casual console services. I'll need support for 6 to 12 players in real time for pvp matches and 3 players in real time for the campaign. Would I be able to do this with TGB in it's initial state or will I need to purchase the TNL? I'm assuming that the light version only supports turn based networking like chess, checkers, monopoly, or whatever your poison. This game is in its prototype phase but I'd like to test the networking functionality. Another question is will I need to get another programmer that is familiar with network programming or will an decent programmer be able to figure it out with TNL?
NextNext Thread
PrevPrevious Thread
More from Torque Game Builder


Torque 3D Owner Eric Knouff
#1
06/12/2008 (11:23 am)
Well, let me first say that I think TGB out of the box can very much handle this. It just depends on how you want to implement it. TGB only supports event based networking through scripting, however if you have access to the source you can enable the stream based networking portion of the code.

I don't have a lot of experience with networking and im not exactly the best programmer around, but I do have stream based networking working in TGB right now(WITHOUT networked datablocks). It took about 2 weeks of reading the forums, mucking through the source and testing to get the basics working(objects moving around on the screen on the server and ghosting to the clients). The basic network code is well documented and pretty easy to understand and besides having to implement extrapolation and interpolation methods(what im doing now) its all pretty cut and dry.

Now, as far as trying to merge TNL with TGB, I never did have much luck with it...

Honestly, if I were you, id first try to implement your game using TGB's event based networking and see if it suits your needs. If after testing you decide you need more control over the mechanics of networking or need a quicker response time(due to being PVP) then start really looking into modding the engine to enable stream based networking(or using custom events).

Torque Owner Glenn Thomas
#2
06/12/2008 (11:47 am)
Thanks for sharing your experiences with me Eric it helps a lot. I needed to upgrade my edition of TGB anyways and doing so is a lot cheaper than purchasing TNL and not being able to merge the two. Good luck with the inter- and extra- -polation. I'm good at math but never took the time to focus on it. Any other suggestions or comments on this topic are more than welcome.