I have just one question, I have been working with this book for quite some time. I am attempting to run your source code for the final chapter so I can see what it looks like before I actually start reading. It will not work at all, when I launch the server.exe it just goes through the tile ids saying was not found then it hits map loaded and does nothing more. Do I need to just follow the entire book and code it myself? There are quite a few differences between the source code you provided and the book.
Aside from those questions, you are really helping me understand the parts of game development I don't think people really touch on. Being able to see how the client and server are structured exactly will really help in my personal studies. Thank you for the great book.
Hello, lurkerz. First of all, I'd like to thank you for reading the book! I'm really glad it helped you out.
The actual server itself simply loads the map and listens for incoming connections, so that they can be handled. The console itself spits out four lines of text when everything is fine, which are the port information, a notification that it began listening for connections, the loading map line, and "Map Loaded!" line. If you're getting tile IDs that weren't found, your tiles.cfg file is probably missing or misplaced. It's as simple as that.
Please let me know if you have any further problems down the line. I hope I was of any assistance.