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Building Multiplayer Games with Leadwerks


Josh

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A new easy-to-use networking system is coming soon to Leadwerks Game Engine.  Built on the Enet library, Leadwerks networking provides a fast and easy way to quickly set up multiplayer games.  Each computer in the game is either a server or a client.  The server hosts the game and clients can join and leave the game at will.  On the other hand, when the server leaves the game, the game is over!

1491250148_client_server.png.df3eb728a7f045355f151f4ec1e5cc6a.png

Creating a Client

You can soon create a client with one command in Leadwerks:

client = Client:Create()

To connect to a server, you need to know the IP address of that computer:

client:Connect("63.451.789.3")

To get information from the other computer, we simply update the client and retrieve a message:

local message = client:Update()
if message.id == Message.Connected then
  	print("Connected to server")
elseif message.id == Message.Disconnected then
  	print("Disconnected from server")
elseif message.id == Message.Chat then
  	print("New chat message: "..message.stream:ReadString());
end

You can even send messages, consisting of a simple message ID, a string, or a stream.

client:Send(Message.Chat,"Hello, how are you today?")

There are two optional flags you can use to control the way your messages are sent.  If you specify Message.Ordered, your packets will arrive in the order they were sent (they won't necessarily otherwise).  You can use this for updating the position of an object, so that the most recent information is always used.  The Message.Reliable flag should be used for important messages that you don't want to miss.  UDP packets are not guaranteed to ever arrive at their destination, but messages sent with this flag are.  Just don't use it for everything, since it is slower!

When we're ready to leave the game, we can do that just as easily:

client:Disconnect()

A dedicated server does not have anyone playing the game.  The whole computer is used only for processing physics and sending and receiving information.  You can create a dedicated server, but it's better to let your players host their own games.  That way there's always a game to join, and you don't have to buy an extra computer and keep it running all the time.

Creating a Server

Your game should be able to run both as a client and as a server, so any player can host or join a game.  Creating the game server is just as easy.

local server = Server:Create(port)

Once the server is created, you can look up your IP address and ask a friend to join your game.  They would then type the IP address into their game and join.

The server can send and receive messages, too.  Because the server can be connected to multiple clients, it must specify which client to send the message to.  Fortunately, the Message structure contains the Peer we received a message from.  A peer just means "someone else's computer".  If your computer is the client, the server you connect to is a peer.  If your computer is the server, all the other clients are peers:

local message = client:Update()
if message.id == Message.Connected then
  	player2 = message.peer
end

You can use the peer object to send a message back to that computer:

server:Send(peer, Message.Chat, "I am doing just great! Thanks for asking.")

If you want to boot a player out of your game, that's easy too:

server:Disconnect(peer)

The broadcast command can be used to send the same message out to all clients:

server:Broadcast(Message.Chat, "I hope you are all having a great time in my cool chat program!")

Public Games

You can make your game public, allowing anyone else in the world who has the game to play with you.  You specify a name for your game, a description of your server, and call this command to send a message to the Leadwerks server:

server:Publish("SuperChat","My SuperChat Server of Fun")

All client machines, anywhere in the world, can retrieve a list of public games and choose one to join:

for n=0,client:CountServers("SuperChat")-1 do
	local remotegame = client:GetServer(n)
  	print(remotegame.address)
  	print(remotegame.description)
end

This is a lot easier than trying to type in one person's IP address.  For added control, you can even host a games database on your own server, and redirect your game to get information from there.

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Would we call client/server Update() in a while loop until it returns nil with the assumption that there might be more than 1 message waiting for us?

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1 minute ago, Rick said:

Would we call Update() in a while loop until it returns nil with the assumption that there might be more than 1 message waiting for us?

That is correct.

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I like it.  Really curious where this ends up.  Interestingly, searching for "enet nat punch through" came up with a gamedev thread you started 6 years ago.

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Any chance we can publish to our own masterserver? Like if I want to test internally or was making a private game?

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How well will this work with writing unsigned char* data to a socket? Is this TCP or UDP? Does this have callbacks for dropped client/server connections?

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41 minutes ago, Einlander said:

Any chance we can publish to our own masterserver? Like if I want to test internally or was making a private game?

Yes, you can upload the script on your server and use your own database.

14 minutes ago, martyj said:

How well will this work with writing unsigned char* data to a socket? Is this TCP or UDP? Does this have callbacks for dropped client/server connections?

You can use a bankstream to write any characters.  It uses UDP.  An event is received when a connection is dropped.  (There's not really any such thing as a "connection" in UDP, but it is "formed" and "broken" by Enet.)

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Just now, Josh said:

You can use a bankstream to write any characters.  It uses UDP.  An event is received when a connection is dropped.  (There's not really any such thing as a "connection" in UDP, but it is "formed" and "broken" by Enet.)

By Enet are you referring to http://enet.bespin.org/?

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5 minutes ago, martyj said:

By Enet are you referring to http://enet.bespin.org/?

Yes.  It's already built into Leadwerks and is used for the Lua debugger.  I just had to finished up a few details.

Originally, I had plans for a grand automagical system that would sync entities automatically, but I figured it was better to get this out there with pure user-defined messaging, and then build another layer on top of it, if needed.

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Quote

All client machines, anywhere in the world, can retrieve a list of public games and choose one to join:


for n=0,client:CountServers()-1 do
	local remotegame = client:GetServer(n)
  	print(remotegame.address)
  	print(remotegame.description)
end

Shouldn't there be the name of the game somewhere in there, as well? Or do you just get a list of all servers and then have to read through the descriptions to see, if it is a server for your game?

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I would think that because he's using client: the client is already connected to the server and so you are basically querying the server that you are connected to.

 

[EDIT]

Actually I was thinking you'd be connected to some master server but maybe not.

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4 hours ago, Ma-Shell said:

Shouldn't there be the name of the game somewhere in there, as well? Or do you just get a list of all servers and then have to read through the descriptions to see, if it is a server for your game?

Yes, I corrected the code above.

33 minutes ago, DoomSlayer said:

This will come to LE4 or 5?

This will be in a 4.x version.

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How long do you think this will be until it's in? In the next 6 months I think I'll have a need for this.

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23 minutes ago, Rick said:

How long do you think this will be until it's in? In the next 6 months I think I'll have a need for this.

It's done, but not tested or documented much.

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4 minutes ago, Rick said:

Sorry, I should have said when do you think it'll be pushed to release branch?

It will be included in 4.4 but probably won't be "official" until 4.5.

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I really hate this. There is so much cool stuf you do with this and so little time.....

Maybe after some 'projects' are done, I will incorporate this in 'on the road again'. Would be fun to see multiple balls trying the same level.

Does this also work when you run an instance of the game as server and an instance as client on the same computer?

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6 minutes ago, AggrorJorn said:

I really hate this. There is so much cool stuf you do with this and so little time.....

Maybe after some 'projects' are done, I will incorporate this in 'on the road again'. Would be fun to see multiple balls trying the same level.

Does this also work when you run an instance of the game as server and an instance as client on the same computer?

My chat example does exactly that.  Just connect to 127.0.0.1.

It's all documented and implemented at this point.  I added it into Linux this afternoon (not available yet).

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