Hi guys,
I am thinking on creating simple multiplayer game with custom backend for the fun of the learning and afterwards when i gain some experience and knowledge i have an idea for online multiplayer game which i’d like to create.
I believe i have enough coding experience (although i am aware this is not going to be an easy thing to do) but i lack some multiplayer design theory so i came here to ask you more experience guys couple of questions related to connecting client front end and server backend.
Let’s say backend is going to be developed in Java and will be using sockets to connect with flash and vice versa. Also, mysql database will be used to save any game related informations.
My first question is regarding character movement in such a multiplayer online game.
If you have a character in client swf file which you instruct to move (either by clicking mouse on a distanced position or by keyboard arrows) how do you exactly propagate such an instruction to all other connected clients. I came to a two options so was wondering which one of them would be best practice and why:
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after such a move instruction you move you character in swf client file by updating it’s movieclip positio in display list and then propagate “move” instruction to server through socket with additional parameters like character id and position where it should go. Then server dispatches such a instruction to all connected clients other than this one which initiated movement.
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after such a move instruction, client swf file sends a “move” instruction to sockets but don’t move a character until server receives “move” instruction and dispatch it to all connected clients including this one who initiated movement. When clients receive this notice, they update position of that character inlcuding client who initiated movement.
From what i see, the second option looks better to me but i am not sure wheather this will cause delay/latency since there will pass some time from the moment client swf file decides to move a character to time needed to send that move command to server through socket and recieve that same notice dispatched from server again and act on it. What do you think, what is considered to be best practice and how to deal with this kind of things?
My second question is similar but regarding to saving game status. If you have a game where you’ll be collecting money for example and buying certain items you have to store current status somehow. My logical guess would be to store it to a databas such as mysql or similar. But now i get to the question.
If you move your character around and collect the money do you send right a way command like “updateMoneyCount” or similar through socket and then save new value to a database? Do you at the same time update visually number of coins TextField on client side swf or all of this is done somehow differently? I guess there is no point to dispatch such an action through server to other connected clients since it has nothing to do with them?
If that’s how it’s done, then why a lot of online multiplayer games store some kind of information in SharedObject files? What do they store and why when those files can be easily manipulated and basically cheat?
I know this is a lot of questions, i would appreciate any input i can get since those are question moving through my head and i would like to know that stuff before even starting to work on such a game.
Thanks in advance,
Cheers
