Creating a multiplayer game is more than adding networking capabilities as an afterthought. A good design and a solid architecture are what determine the quality of the multiplayer aspects of a game. Making the right design decisions might come naturally to a seasoned game developer, but someone who is new to networked games will greatly benefit from building a good understanding of the different concepts before jumping in. That’s exactly what this book delivers: it addresses all of the key concepts needed to start developing a networked game from scratch.

The book starts with two chapters of general background. The first one gives a high-level overview of networked games, and the second recaps some of the basic technologies that support the Internet.

The chapters that follow address the particulars involved in developing a networked game. Their topics progress in ascending levels of abstraction, from sending packets to setting up a server in the cloud. It’s also worth mentioning that the authors address a few common real-world challenges. Reliability, scalability, and security each have their own chapters.

Ample code examples throughout the text ensure that the reader knows how to put everything into practice. The results of these samples are two complete games of which the source code is available online.

If you have no or just limited experience with developing (networked) games, then Multiplayer game programming is an excellent book to get you started. It takes a top-down approach and contains the essential concepts needed to design and implement a reliable networked game. The reader is assumed to be familiar with C++ and basic game concepts; the book is not too technical in the sense that it’s well suited for students and aspiring game developers. The authors did a great job of abstracting most aspects of game development. The result is a relatively generic multiplayer architecture that should be easy to integrate with existing game code.

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