The Practical Guide to Building Reliable Networked Multiplayer Games

Networked multiplayer games are a multibillion dollar business: some games now attract tens of millions of players. In this practical, code-rich guide, Joshua Glazer and Sanjay Madhav guide you through every aspect of engineering them. Drawing on their immense experience as both game developers and instructors, the authors lead you through building a robust multiplayer architecture, and creating every engine-level system. You’ll learn through in-depth working code examples for two complete games: an action game and a real time strategy (RTS) game.

First, Madhav and Glazer review the essentials of networking and network programming from the standpoint of game developers. Next, they walk through managing game data transmission, updating game objects across the network, and organizing the devices that join your game. You’ll learn how to ensure reliable performance despite the Internet’s inherent inconsistencies, and how to design game code for maximum security and scalability. The authors conclude by addressing two increasingly crucial issues: incorporating gamer services and hosting your games in the cloud.

This guide’s content has been extensively tested through the authors’ multiplayer game programming courses at USC. It is equally valuable both to students and to working game programmers moving into networked games.

Coverage includes

How games have evolved to meet the challenges of networked environments
Using Internet communication protocols and standards in game development
Working with Berkeley Socket, the most widely used networking construct in multiplayer gaming
Formatting game data for efficient Internet transmission
Synchronizing states so all players share the same world
Organizing networking topologies for large-scale games
Overcoming latency and jitter problems that cause delays or lost data
Scaling games without compromising performance
Combating security vulnerabilities and software cheats
Leveraging the networking functionality of the popular Unreal 4 and Unity game engines
Integrating gamer services such as matchmaking, achievements, and leaderboards
Running game servers in the cloud

About the Website C++ source code for all examples is available at github.com/MultiplayerBook. Instructors will also find a full set of PowerPoint slides and a sample syllabus.