XNA goes networked!

amadrias@hotmail.com — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:00:00 GMT

I've been working on my XNA implementation of the network API I built for a project disconnected to XNA framework and annoucements. Mainly my main tasks have been defining the XNA developer requirements and based on those requirements define a network framework as well as the inner design.

Basically, I thought most of the XNA developers would be hobbiest developers at least until the XNA Game Studio Pro is released by Microsoft.

Therefore, I decided to provide XNA developers with a simple but fully featured client server framework. I still have to find a suitable name for this framework but here is a list of the features anyone will find in it:

Full TCP protocol support
Full UDP protocol support with reliable and unreliable message distribution
Multithreaded
Message broadcast through all clients thanks to Multicast for LAN (Local Area Network) as well as a custom and powerful broadcarsting message system for WAN (Wide Area Network)
Proxy and Firewall support
A Server class with his own thread that can be instantiated either in your game (for player hosted games) or in its own application (for server hosted games).
A simple framework to register the data you want to be updated within each frame update
The server manages message queuing, reliable and unreliable messages and movement predictions to avoid too many network calls.
And much more...

The objective of this API will be to provide XNA developers with the basis of a client server system to host and join simple games that needs support of 2 to 16 players.

Once I release this framework, I'll be looking at either I work or not on implementing to XNA the network framework to provide XNA developers with a Professional edition which will give a full control on how they want to implement their client and servers. This edition should normally allow these developers to create servers supporting more players for First person shooter games with more than 16 players or even a MMORPG.

I'm still not sure I will however move in that direction as it will depend on two important points:

When Microsoft will release its XNA Game Studio Pro edition and weither or not they will finally implement the XBOX Live support.
If I release my network API largely before any annoucement from Microsoft on the above and if it has reached some success in the XNA community.

Regarding pricing, I'm not fully set yet but I do want it to be cheap to the community as hobbiest developers are already giving a lot to get in this hobby game development (US$99 for Creator's club, some bucks also for content software...). I think therefore it shouldn't reach more than US$20-30.

Now, I'm starting implementing it. I expect to get some results already by the end of the week. Until then, I'll be posting some news on progress.

Networking in XNA Windows

amadrias@hotmail.com — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:00:00 GMT

I developed some time ago a managed network API that I'm using for a prototype project I am working on. It's quite easy to use and it has the main features needed for a simple game.

It supports UDP (reliable/unreliable), TCP and HTTP protocols which are the most used protocols.

I am planning to make a port of my code to XNA using the Game framework to make it even simpler to add networking capabilities to games.

I have a lot of ideas around this and I'll let you know more as soon as I'll get my hands on the design.

Amadrias's blog

XNA goes networked!

Networking in XNA Windows