I''m creating an online action/strategy game. I don''t know how some of you ppl talk about sending 500 byte UDP packets, when I have usually only 1-8 byte packets (+header) and I send them about 10 times per second. Only chat messages are bigger. From client->server I send key presses (or coordinates). And from server->client only the stuff that client can see and what is important. I also read about Serious Sam (a 3d action game like Quake) compressing UDP packets. Compressing?! The ~4 byte packets I use probably wouldn''t gain much from compression . I understand the header is 20 bytes and when my packets are only about 4 bytes, the header part is quite large. But still the traffic is about 1-2 kb/sec so who cares? Or am I missing something important now?

Good luck keeping the packets that low. You''ll find as you flesh out your client - server protocols and sync scheme, you''ll have to send more than 4 bytes / entity. What about world state data which the client doesn''t see ? or the timmer sync routine for the dead recoking to work? Etc.. it adds up, though not to 500 bytes/update worth though. It will proably be 50 bytes/update, more likely. And at times can peak at much higher, perhaps 2x - 3x that much per packet during heavy action scenes. As for compression it only becomes functional with an adaptive scheme or using a dictonary scheme sent async with the packets and the packets have to be large enough to be worth compressing.

I think the UDP header is 32 bytes.

Good Luck

-ddn