Network Module?

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I seem to remeber quite some time ago the promise of a Network Module. I'm sure it was Mark or Skid who mentioned it.

Is anything like this in the current pipeline?

I think a lib like this would complememnt the Blitz Products nicely.

Um, Blitzmax already has network support?

Or have I missed something?

All versions of Blitz have network support

I'm not meaning basic netwrok support or even support between 8 to 16 connections.

I'm talking about a Network module that can be used to handle massive connections like COD 2 or Unreal.

I was on a 64 player server that was full about a week ago when playing COD2.

If all Blitz's can do this then OK, I didn't know.

I'm still sure though that someone from BRL talked about the release of an easy to use netwrok lib/Module.

[edit] I was reading up on the features of 3impacts network abilities. Can blitz do the same?

This is taken from the 3Impact Site


Synchronized Simulation. A few function calls will enable your simulations to run, in synchrony, on multiple LAN or Internet connected computers, and to be remotely controlled real-time. Specifically designed to work with 3Impact's dynamics system, the multiplayer engine does everything behind the scenes for you. Just forget issues like dead-reckoning, cubic spline interpolation, prediction algorithms!
Because the whole simulation, including collision detection, sound effects, game logic and so on, is processed locally on each connected computer, it tends to run identical on all linked computers.
It means that only small and infrequent adjustments will be necessary to keep it the same for all users.
This approach minimizes the amount of data to share, thus ultimately maximizing the number of simultaneous players.

Client/server-based Network Messaging. Additionally, the engine provides functions to transfer binary data from clients to the server and from the server to each specific client. You can use low-level data transfer functions to implement chat systems, to upload/download files, to share game databases and even to code custom synchronization systems.
But you'll find low-level function power and flexibility great, when it comes to implement game-specific world state distribution algorithms for your massive multiplayer games!



3Impact relies on DirectPlay as does Blitz3D. As for BlitzMax I think it uses raw sockets. Should be able but you'll have to do some handwork.

on BM you have something like that through GNet

Thought you might want to make the ghosting behavior a little more performance optimized.

In the end this means that you need to create your extended GNetObject which has a position and only sync basing on distance.

That way you basically have something that works very good as a base for a networking system for a 16-64 player system.
Depending on your game, you might even modify the 32 fields approach in GNet and reduce it ...


What you then basically do to use that for your needs: Only the server creates GNetObjects, all clients only send messages to the server about what they do.


Thats just an idea.
thats basically what OpenTNL (network system of torque which had 256 player online multiplayer back in 56k days) does with its ghosting mechanism ... basically because there are some further steps involved like data packing for smaller transfers etc.
but thats higher level stuff that must be implemented for each ghosted class itself, so its not part of the networking system after all.