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Author Topic: How Mature is the Network Module?  (Read 2196 times)

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Spirrwell

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How Mature is the Network Module?
« on: November 02, 2015, 01:38:26 am »
This is really a general question. But basically I'm working on learning the fundamentals of a game engine implemented with SFML (purely to learn) and I wanted to know SFML's versatility with networking. Do you recommend using SFML's network module exclusively, or is there another more mature networking library that's lightweight and verbose?

I've only really experimented with networking a few times with a couple of different libraries, and it's not something I know a lot about, but I'm much more confident with it after working on a multiplayer game for some time now. Basically I'm looking for something that's both simple to work with yet expandable. SFML has exceeded my expectations with that, but I wanted to get some input from somebody who's worked with it.

Turbine

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Re: How Mature is the Network Module?
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2015, 09:04:27 am »
I'll give you my own brief opinion.

-Using bsdsocks/winsock is not really worth it, using something like SFML's networking is a great deal simpler to use.
-SFML does not provide its own low level UDP -> TCP features, like ENET.
-Binaries SFML network library provides support for transporting more complex data types (like multiple dimensional data structures) and a few other nifty things - but it's a bit more complex to implement.
-SFML's networking is very easy to use, the only hiccup is that you need to really do a bit of multi-threading on the server.

I've used the top three libraries mentioned above (bsdsocks/winsock, ENET, SFML network extension library), yet I only see SFML's as a truly portable and simple-to-use approach for the essentials.

 

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