Network API to Irrlicht

[DebugBSD]

Hi, good morning

Please, let me introduce myself first of all. As you might know, I'm new into this forum. I'm a programmer (I've been writing code in Assembly Language and C for almost 10 years and have some experience C++) and I always wanted to make a 3D Videogame but I hadn't a 3D Engine and my knowledge of 3D, OpenGL and maths was so bad, but I wanted to make my 3D videogame, so after some time searching on google I found Irrlicht which it seems to be all I need. I've downloaded, I tried all the examples and palyed a bit with the the engine and it seems to be the best of all 3D engines which I've tested. The thing is I'm making my 3D videogame and I'd like to add network support to the videogame and other stuff more.

I'd like to know if there is a network api to use into Irrlicht. I thought in irrNet but it seems to be a little bit outdated. Indeed, the last post in this forum is about 2007 so ... a long time ago. Before to start researching about network api's to use with Irrlicht, I'd like to know what are your thoughts about this. Do you know about an API to use with Irrlicht? Or maybe I have to implement my own network api? And, how could implement my own network API with Irrlicht if I have to?

I appreciate your answers!!
Have a nice day
Guille

[CuteAlien]

You should use an external network API. The most complete one for games is probably Raknet. If you prefer more control over how the network functions you can also use a lower-layer network library like enet or even write your network part directly with the sockets API from you operating systems.

[DebugBSD]

Thank you very much CuteAlien

I'll look at RakNet as soon as I get at home! I remember that sometime ago I saw ENet but I don't remember right now why I rejected it.

Thanks!

[Brainsaw]

Hi,

with my current project "Stunt Marble Racers 2" I stick to Web-Standards. This has also worked quite well in my previous game "The Sky of Verdun". I've implemented my own HTTP / Websocket layer using (in my case) Windows Sockets. I'd say it depends. Don't know if it's a good idea if you want to do some massive multiplayer game, but for my games (Maximum tried was 8 players with the "Sky of Verdun" game) it works quite well, and the marble racer game is limited to 4 players).

[DebugBSD]

Hi brainsaw,

I appreciate your reply a lot. Right now, I'm not going to do a HTTP/Websocket layer in my current project although I have to admit that I thought about it. I won't do that because my project is going to run on a computer pc with a dedicated server and most of the time the connection will be based on UDP sessions with the exception of the login which will be based on TCP + SSL (or some kind of secure connection). Anyway, I take note cause some day maybe I need to do a HTTP/Websocket connection.

Thank you very much!

[MartinVee]

If you're going to implement your own network api, may I suggest you look at Google's protobuf? It's a library that encode data into the smallest possible stream to send it over a communication mecanism (network, serial, etc). It can also be used as a serialization library.

[Brainsaw]

Back in the days I was using IrrNet (iirc) for the first "Stunt Marble Racers" game. Also worked fine. For the current game I want to keep the option to code a HTML client as well. "The Sky of Verdun" was initially a HTML5 game (after I was sent to a HTML5 seminar by the company I worked for back then) so I already had the Websocket client

[DebugBSD]

Hi, good morning!

I've seen Google's protobuf this days back and I need to say that it's a very good library. I think I can use it to define my own set of messages between client and server. It's seems to be a good choice!!

Thanks!