Are there any server-side APIs/libraries/services which are considered some sort of standard for creating multiplayer games for iOS, maybe even some part of the iOS/XCode technology stack? Or would every real-time multiplayer game typically have a bespoke server just like PC games would?

What about handling players in different locations around the world, etc - is it up to the developers to have multiple servers or do Apple provide any server facilities as part of deploying your game on the app-store?

My impression is that an iOS game is nothing special, it's just a program which talks to a server via typical network communication, so I could have Android players playing against iOS players... but you rarely seem to see this scenario which made me wonder if there are some lock-ins on the technology.

If anyone has worked on a multiplayer iOS game I'd love to hear how you approached this.

GameKit is the official iOS framework for handling players, matchmaking, networking, leaderboards, and achievements. It supports both real-time and turn-based games. For turn-based games, Apply will store up to 64K data per turn. For real-time games you can use either peer-to-peer or client-server communication models. For the client-server model Apple does not provide any game server services so you have to host your own.

GameKit / GameCenter is limited to iOS and Mac so you can not play against Android players, in that case you have to basically duplicate the matchmaking functionality yourself.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html

I never heard of that, thanks a lot. If if supports client-server but Apple provides no server services, this must mean the protocol is totally open...meaning you could write a connector to your existing server or an existing server middleware API?

I never heard of that, thanks a lot. If if supports client-server but Apple provides no server services, this must mean the protocol is totally open...meaning you could write a connector to your existing server or an existing server middleware API?

Once you've prepared a match request and the GameCenter matchmaker has found players, what you get is a network connection where you can send and receive blocks of bytes (either to a specific player or to all of them at once). So for both peer-to-peer and client-server, it is up to you to implement a protocol that interpret these blocks of bytes and deals with the specific objects and mechanics of your games.

And presumably if you have a server app,

I never heard of that, thanks a lot. If if supports client-server but Apple provides no server services, this must mean the protocol is totally open...meaning you could write a connector to your existing server or an existing server middleware API?

Once you've prepared a match request and the GameCenter matchmaker has found players, what you get is a network connection where you can send and receive blocks of bytes (either to a specific player or to all of them at once). So for both peer-to-peer and client-server, it is up to you to implement a protocol that interpret these blocks of bytes and deals with the specific objects and mechanics of your games.

Ah, and if you write a server app you just need to implement a way to open the connection without using iOS API - which presumably they explain in the docs - as most servers are not going to be running on OSX.

Thanks.

Try considering Photon from exitgames (http://www.exitgames.com/) - server side is C#, and can run on any windows server. If you don't need any server logic, just simple standard matching, rooms, etc - you can use their cloud solution. It's also free for start (on your own server up to 100 concurrent users, cloud solution also have some small free plan). I'd had a quite nice experience with it.

Thanks for the link - however if I was going to use an off-the-shelf server middle ware tool, I'd go for SmartFoxServer (Java based), purely because I've worked with it on multiple projects in the past.

Looks nice :)