C# Game Network Library

Question

I am developing an online strategy game using .Net v2. Although the game is primarily strategic, it does have some tactical elements that require reasonable network performa

Answer 1

Why limit yourself to .NET 2.0. .NET 3.0 (or 3.5) contains WCF and is a solid, performant communications subsystem with good security. .NET 3.0 is just .NET 2.0 with additional libraries (WCF, WF, WPF).

Answer 2

Microsoft's own .NET based XNA allows you to create networked games on Windows and XBox 360.

Answer 3

http://code.google.com/p/lidgren-network-gen3/

Lidgren.Network is a networking library for .net framework which uses a single udp socket to deliver a simple API for connecting a client to a server, reading and sending messages.

Answer 4

You could take a look at Entanglar ( http://entanglar.dunnchurchill.com ) if you are looking for something higher level. Entanglar provides full entity lifecycle and sync.

Answer 5

Although this question is rather old, a somewhat higher level system developed specifically for games is APlay - among the supported platforms is also C#. There are evaluation versions and it is free for personal use.

You define your game objects in an UML alike fashion and an online code generator creates assemblies containing your game objects. Sending state updates is then as simple as calling setter methods.

Not the right thing, if you want to cope with sockets by yourself. Please also note that I am a developer of APlay so this is a biased answer.

Answer 6

An ancient question, but I'll put this out there for anyone else who stumbles across this. We're using OpenTNL for our game, Bitfighter, and I am consistently surprised at how well it works. And it's free if you can live with GPL.