Ok so I have this purely hypothetical problem and I would like some professional opinions on it.

Basically I, oh - of course I mean a friend of mine. Is part of group of independent developers who are working on a new game, it has been recently released and now they are wanting to make it multiplayer. This involves a great many changes, as majority of the program was not built with multiplayer in mind. The current medium is C++, with much in script files.

The current plan is to start the server section in C# on reasoning of "It's really simple actually, rapid development while not sacrificing any speed/power".

Now my friend thinks this is a terrible idea, simply because a lot of the code the server and client uses will be the same, or similar variations. Which means we will have some mixture of cross language interfaces, code rewriting and code duplication all of which should be avoided where not necessary.

I have no issue C# as a language, if we were starting again its perfectly valid choice, but the fact is we have a lot already done, a majority of which only needs adapting not completely rewritten.

So I come to gamedev to hopefully get some professional objective opinions.

Thanks,

P.s. I put this in "General programming", as it although pertains to a game, the problem is not specific to games. Feel free to move it.


Edit: I must make clear that I know it could work, i don't dispute its perfectly possible, - its more why do that why?
I think there is obvious hindrance and no actual benefit.

Not sure what you are asking about for "the server section".

If you are talking about a client/server architecture and the other executable being in a different language....

The client and the server are generally completely different code bases. They may share some enumeration values and other constants, but the logic behind them is usually very different.

All that really matters is that the network protocol between the two is the same.

A properly developed networked game will have a very clearly defined communications protocol. If you are following best practices it should not be an issue.

If you are talking about each individual game being able to host a game, and that in-game code being written in a different language...

Mixing languages inside code is not a difficult thing. Most major games incorporate compiled code from multiple languages.

It is very straightforward to mix C++ and C#, especially on the PC. It is a little harder on consoles, but I've known many shipped titles that use Mono to ship with compiled C#.

I was more referring to how all the various different types of objects in the game are stored and connected to each other. It is true that server, client and standalone will have different views of these objects, but they'll have great similarities. For which i think using same code would be best.
Maybe I am exaggerating the complexity of mixing C++, C# but you surely can't say that it would be simpler without such?

- Most importantly, thank you for response.

How objects are viewed when talking between the client and server depends on your serialization tools, not on the programming language.

I hear and understand what you guys are saying, I know server and client have different views of an object. But there will be similarities, if I was using the same language for both then the common variables and functions would be in a class that the specializations derive from.

I may be over apprehensive over having little bits of code here and there written in different languages. But it does seem very messy to me, especially if it can be easily avoided?

Both - standalone server but client that can host, however I think the current plan is too have client simply start up a local standalone server and interface with that even in single player. Which also strikes me as bad idea, we already have performance problems.