I'm fairly new to multiplayer games. I have made a few for my own fun, but nothing profound.
Anyway, I want to make a game that is very cross-platform. The clients would be connected with their facebook accounts on the devices I release the game for (most likely computers (via flash), iPhone, and android). I am a solo developer on a shoestring budget (actually more like no budget). So, I want to make the game with a peer-to-peer connection. I would like to avoid using a client/server setup because of the cost to maintain a server. The problem I am running into is there is no way to connect peers over the internet, and the game is not meant to be played over a local wifi.
So, I have an idea. Can I use facebook's built in xmpp chat to send the game's multiplayer communication over the internet? I have head of xmpp being used for multiplayer games before. Does anyone have any other ideas? I understand that xmpp can be connected peer-to-peer, but can it be done over the internet somehow. I don't want the users to have to mess with router settings to play.
Thanks for your help!
The main problem in P2P systems are NATs and firewalls. Firewalls can be locally opened, NATs cannot in 99% of the cases. In the IPv6 world there will be no NATs, so P2P will be free for all.
Now you want to use Facebook's XMPP APIs for P2P multiplayer. Well... Facebook's XMPP is practically client/server because of the above reason. All Facebook's APIs do is to hide the transport layer to applications, meaning that you can send messages to "another user" while they actually transit through Facebook server. Skype is another example of P2P+server environment. If two users stand behind a NAT, it automatically uses a proxy server.
This is mostly the same with FB's XMPP, so you can go with that, unless your facebook users will see lots of strange messages in their chat window :)
I think you cannot build a multi-player game just by using facebook jabber servers. You will need to have a custom jabber component sitting at your own server to enforce your game business logic on the xmpp packets transferred between the game users.
This will (probably) involve writing custom Jabber Component Protocol XEP-0114 and Bosh Connection Manager component at your end. If you are looking to use PHP for developing your application you can have a look at Jaxl library (XMPP component and client library in PHP)
Related
I have an iphone app with rails serving as a backend server.
Now I need to implement a chat functionality using sockets connections.
A lot of examples show you how to implement chat using sockets in browser.
What I need here is how I can implement an application where you create socket server in the rails app , and the client in iphone app which listens to the channel I give them.
I tried using faye(examples given only how to implement client in the browser) and using fayeObjC library for iphone to create client, but am not able to listen to the channel from this library.I know I must be implementing it wrong here.
I'll share my code also here, but first I need to know is there a better solution than this?
Also I appreciate some links to some examples where socket server is in rails and clients are iphone app.
Appreciate any help and mostly need a right direction to implement it.
Update
I tried the faye combination again and it worked.Although still looking for more solutions.
You can check about TCP sockets:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/3932/how-to-create-a-socket-based-iphone-app-and-server
Chat Application Using Ruby
http://quickblox.com/modules/chat/
http://caydenliew.com/2011/11/ios-mac-os-communication-with-asyncsocket/
http://www.macresearch.org/cocoa-scientists-part-xxix-message
Next link is a comprehensive Networking Guide - Using Internet Sockets
You must keep in mind two major problems to peer-to-peer communications (Chat): reachability and how to receive new messages while your application is in the background (get notifications).
For the last you can use APNS approach: an invisible notification will be pushed to the iPhone indicating that a new message is ready to be read. So your app will make a request for unread messages (what app like WhatsApp does).
Besides TCP sockets you could use websockets (HTTP - so there are no firewall problems).
Best in class - Socket.IO.
Here you will find the wiki https://github.com/learnboost/socket.io/wiki (you will find there an extension for Ruby also)
Here an example for iOS chat client for socket.io & node.js backend
Jabber
Another option: XMPP - "stands for eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. Such a protocol is open-standard and oriented to message exchange (builds and maintains by Jabber community). Message exchange happens near real time, so it is an ideal infrastructure to build chat-like applications. The protocol also implements a mechanism to notify presence information (whether a user is online or not) and the maintenance of a contact list. XMPP is a thorough protocol, which has been adopted also by big companies like Google to build their Instant Messaging service."
Here you will find all about developing a Jabber Client for iOS (enable users to sign in, add buddies, and send messages; how to install and configure a jabber server, create accounts, and interact with the server from an iOS application http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iphone/building-a-jabber-client-for-ios-server-setup/
I know that SocketRocket by square is a strong native Objective-C library. But it doesn't offer the channel abstraction you seem to be looking for.
If you would consider outsourcing the WebSocket connections then you could use a hosted service like Pusher, who I work for. You can publish messages (trigger events) on channels using the pusher-gem. And you can subscribe to channels and receive messages using one of Pusher's Objective-C libraries.
Other solutions will also have Objective-C libraries and you can find a list of them via this realtime web tech guide.
Im developing an app where one iOS device act as "server", and other devices are acting like clients.
Im getting hard time with understanding if I can make this using Bonjour
If I make an example:
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All devices have same app installed. All users are connected to the same WIFI.
User must login into app, and when it does, chat rooms are populated from CMS (web server) from internet.
All of them see e.g. all "chat rooms". But at the beginning chat rooms are all read only. Anyone can browse these, but nobody can write into them.
When administrator (user with admin privileges) opens one of the chat rooms; all clients are now able to write into "open" chat rooms.
Of course when one user writes something down, the other users see the newest comment from him.
Administrator should see all clients in chat room but clients cannot see each other.
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All samples which I have found (WiTap, videos from WWDC,...) are using two devices only. I've installed WiTap on 4 devices. And I can establish connection and working "sample" game with two devices.
Can Bonjour service be used in such way that multiple cients are connected to one "server"?
Any hints are very welcome!
Yes, Bonjour can be used like that: for example Apache on Mac OS X has mod_bonjour so that web browsers can find a web server on the local network. That can mean having one server but multiple browsers: exactly the situation you describe.
One limitation is that the way Bonjour is configured in iOS means that the server and clients need to be on the same local network. It doesn't sound like the situation you describe is compatible with using Bonjour in that way, but then I also don't think you need to. You can use the DNS name of your chat server in the app, so any app can discover the server. The server can also be responsible for discovering which clients are connected and allowing people to find each other (indeed, I guess that's what the chat rooms are for).
This is a good place to start. http://mobileorchard.com/tutorial-networking-and-bonjour-on-iphone/ I have build the same Server and client with the help of chatty. But you will face one problem in iOS5 only, when the iphone will go to sleep mode, the socket connection lost. I am not able to solve this problem. So, looking for help. :)
I see that Game Kit allows you to develop games with voice chat.
I want to build a more general, peer-to-peer voice chat application, that does not have to live in the Game Center. So a couple questions:
1. What peer to peer system/technologies could be used for this?
2. If I wanted to allow voice chat with a Flash client (i.e. iPhone app <--> Server <---> Flash client on PC) would options for 1 work for this?
I have some experience with RTFMP for Flash to Flash client chat, and no iPhone dev experience, so just want to test out some ideas.
Maybe one idea: build using the Ribbit Platform - they have both Objective-C and Flash SDKs, but this looks more like traditional\SIP calling.
Anyway, would appreciate anything that points me in the right direction.
Thanks.
Now that flash has access to raw Microphone data, you could roll your own client and server; yet, since, currently, it doesn't have UDP sockets in AIR for mobile, you would be forced into considering audio quality vs lagg with even tighter restrictions then usual.
You can now roll your own native extension to make this work; yet, I am assuming you want something that only requires coding in AS3.
Therefore, considering your restrictions, the only real bet would be to use Flash's built-in communications capabilities (e.g. RTMP).
With the above being said, there are opensource alternatives to the array of Adobe's own flash communication servers:
the red5 server, and rtmpd.
IMHO Ribbit's services are kind of pointless.
I want to create a playstation home style multiplayer game for iphone. How can I implement multiplayer in my project? Also, how can I give players a chance to chat? How can I let them create their own avatars to interact? I am a one man developer, with no access to servers. Maybe I can use iPhone game centre???
If you're looking for some kind of platform to build on, there is a product called SmartFoxServer:
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
I have not used it, but it claims to provide a client API for native Obj-C or Unity3D. It allows for chat features.
If you want to roll your own, I recommend getting started with NodeJS:
http://nodejs.org/
GameCenter does not provide any kind of backend for multiplayer networking, at least not in the way you are implying. If you intend to build a networked multiplayer game over the internet, you most likely need some kind of backend.
Slicehost is a good way of getting a server like NodeJS running quickly and cheaply:
http://www.slicehost.com/
Don't forget that GameKit in iOS allows multiple devices to find each other locally (via Bluetooth or local Wifi) and create sessions. This might be a good starting point for your game. Here's some info on GameKit:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html
I think this would usually be done with webservice interaction against a server. You may be able to develop a webservice and pay a small fee to have it hosted by a web provider, or to use your own machine as (an unreliable) server while proving the concept.
Or you could just use Nextpeer - http://www.nextpeer.com
It makes adding online tournaments to your game real simple.
You can look at Gamooga (http://www.gamooga.com/).
Its a realtime communication platform for multiplayer games so you dont need to worry about building and deploying your own multiplayer servers. You can upload your own server side scripts onto Gamooga's cluster which receive and process your clients' messages. You can use Gamooga's iOS API with in your app to send messages from the client side to your server side scripts. You can download the SDK and look at the demos to start off.
There is a free plan of Gamooga platform too that you can make use of to start with.
Disclosure: I am founder of Gamooga, replying only since its relevant to the question.
I'm trying to write a simple chat application for the iPhone (as an experiment). Is there a simple way for two devices to discover each others' IP addresses, and given the addresses is there a simple API or protocol that would let me send text messages back and forth?
I've investigated SIP (specifically Sofia and eXosip), but these tools exist as C libraries and are beyond my current ability to port them to the iPhone.
Update: I'm trying to connect two devices over the Internet (i.e. not over Bluetooth or a local wireless network, which is what GameKit does).
You're going to need a server that provides the match making service. Game Center makes this pretty easy, but your users will have to have Game Center accounts.
Alternatively, you can set up an XMPP (formerly Jabber, it's what powers Google Chat) server (I've never done this, but there are several available) and use the XMPP Framework for Cocoa. There are instructions for using it in iPhone apps here.
I'm sure there are other chat servers and client source also available. IRC and Mobile Colloquy come to mind.
Finally, you could write your own server using your favorite server language / framework. This isn't too hard (I've done it myself), but it's far from what I'd call simple, and I wouldn't use it for a production system.
There is support for exactly this kind of ad-hoc peer-to-peer networking in GameKit. Have a look at the second half of the GameKit documentation for details:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/...
NSNetService is a good option.
Take a look at WebRTC Datachannels. WebRTC is a newer option with native iOS support a standard that is still being finalized, but it is more flexible should the iOS app need to communicate with browser or even android peers