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(Cross post from stackoverflow)

I am creating a multiplayer 2D game for Mac and iOS devices. I'll be using cocso2d for graphics/game engine, however I am largely blank on what to use for multiplayer communication. Please note that I cannot use central severs e.g. SmartFox, RedDwarf, etc since I want the players to "host" games for others and be able to play it on their LAN, VPN or my own servers.

Any pointers? I checked lidgren but it's for .NET only and hence not an option for me.

EDIT: just in case it wasn't clear, the messaging has to be real time hence it's probably going to be over UDP

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    \$\begingroup\$ Please post either here or Stack Overflow, but not both. meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/263 \$\endgroup\$
    – user744
    Mar 8, 2011 at 20:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ the guys at stackoverflow had asked me to post here, hence this post. I had no intentions to post twice. \$\endgroup\$
    – ishaq
    Mar 9, 2011 at 10:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ What is your question, specifically? "Any pointers?" isn't an answerable question. \$\endgroup\$
    – Trevor Powell
    Feb 1, 2012 at 1:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ let me rephrase: "looking for a framework that I can integrate into my games so that players can create their own games on LAN a.k.a one of them can become host and others can connect to it. The players may be playing games via iPhone or Mac OS X". And "Any pointers?" is totally answerable question, links to useful frameworks/articles that talk about the above mentioned problem would constitute the answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – ishaq
    Feb 2, 2012 at 16:19

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I've used ReplicaNet http://www.replicanet.com with three different iOS devices connected to the same game. You need to know how to have bindings to C++ but the source compiled without needing many changes for what I wanted. It seems to be the best performing library for mobile devices out there at the moment. It is also well worth talking to the ReplicaNet guys about an indie license if you're short of cash.

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You don't want to be hosting any games from an iOS device, so you are probably looking for something to run on OSX.

I'm not sure how lidgren works or if it is Mono compatible, but the Mono project has done an excellent job of bringing .NET to OSX and Linux. I highly recommend you look into it, especially if your library of choice is .NET.

The server architecture and platform don't dictate what the client must use, so having a Mono/.NET lidgren server and an iOS (Objective-C) client should be just fine; however, there is MonoTouch which brings .NET and C# to iOS, so you could use that if you felt like it.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ actually I'd like my iOS devices to host the games too. and I can go for lidgren, but I was looking for something that was natively supported bo Cocoa/CocoaTouch so that engineering effort is minimized, if I chose lidgren, I'll have to write the client API myself probably, I don't know if mono-touch would compile with objective-c. like I said, for game engine i'm planning to use cocos2d which is objective-c \$\endgroup\$
    – ishaq
    Mar 8, 2011 at 20:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ I have not personally used MonoTouch so I can't speak to its ability to interact with Objective-C, but I've heard very good things about it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Nate
    Mar 8, 2011 at 21:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ Why not host a game on an iDevice? Historically games have been hosted of PC's weaker than the iPhone, with 56k dial-up connections, and it worked :) \$\endgroup\$
    – Zaky German
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ I didn't mean it wouldn't work, I just meant that the 3G connection could cause issues for connected clients. As the phone moves 3G might move to Edge and/or drop for a short period, locking out all connected clients. \$\endgroup\$
    – Nate
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ sure, i understand that. However i believe that (unlike what seems to be the standard these days) users are not totally mentally challenged and will survive a short text explaining that hosting games should be done on wifi or with strong 3G reception and that doing so is far from a deal-breaker. If you do want to go for the lowest IQ common-denominator you can always force wi-fi programatically. \$\endgroup\$
    – Zaky German
    Apr 12, 2011 at 20:19
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You can also use check out AppWarp for building multiplayer games using MonoTouch/MonoDroid. It has a server but doesn't require you to host or deploy. Its on the cloud. Here is a pointer to a blog post describing how to get started on it. http://blogs.shephertz.com/2013/02/15/build-cross-platform-realtime-games-and-apps-using-mono/

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