I've spent the past couple of months making a smallish over-the-head RPG for a class thinking that we'd have a final project for the semester, but it turns out that there's not a final project till the end of the year. This leaves me with a lot of time, and one thing that I've always wanted to learn and try to implement is some kind of online multiplayer. Now, I know how difficult this is, so I'd be satisfied if, in the next four or five months, I can even just get something like a leaderboard up and running. I'm also pretty sure that I have a computer that I can host a basic server on, since it would only be me, my classmates and friends playing. Does anyone have a basic tutorial of how to go about learning how to do something like this? Thanks!

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention, the class is a Java class, so any language-specific help would be great.

[Edited by - shmasmasnash on December 23, 2010 10:30:15 AM]

You should probably learn about TCP sockets and how to write a TCP server and a TCP client. There is a lot of information out there. My usual reference for this type of thing is the book "UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1".

Quote:Original post by shmasmasnash
Now, I know how difficult this is, so I'd be satisfied if, in the next four or five months, I can even just get something like a leaderboard up and running. I'm also pretty sure that I have a computer that I can host a basic server on, since it would only be me, my classmates and friends playing. Does anyone have a basic tutorial of how to go about learning how to do something like this?

Have you read the Networking forum FAQ yet?

It has links to tutorials and articles that probably answer your questions. Many of them have source that could be easily ported to Java. The FAQ also has links to libraries that can do most of the work for you.