Oriented Design And Development Of The Game Networking Engine

Networked game which has gained more attention in recent years is a fast developing industry. In our country, the large and emerging game market is thus driving researchers and practitioners to develop innovative software techniques that allow game players to enjoy exciting and interactive game experiences. However, in our county, the study of networked game engine which is the core of networked game is far behind others. With the rapid development of networked game, the research of networked game engine has received more and more attention and has been placed on the agenda of the state 863 plan in 2003.Because networked game is built on the current Internet, networked game engine must provide strong network processing abilities. Given the fundamental limitations of network programming, such as high packet latency, limited bandwidth and packet loss, networked game engine must have the ability to deal with latency, reduce the bandwidth and cope with packet loss. Besides, networked game engine have to ensure that all players receive a fair and entertaining experience.In this thesis, the technologies in network engine and the key issues in network transmission are first analyzed, and then we introduce a design for the network engine according to the requirement and the layer structure. The network engine is composed of three layers: User Interface Layer,Middle Tier and Socket Layer. User Interface Layer provides the development interface for the networked game developer; Socket Layer copes with the different platform, such as Windows and Linux; Middle Tier is composed of Message Layer and Reliability Layer, dealing with the network message. Then the thesis describes the implementation of the network engine in detail. We describe the implementation of the software development interface, the encapsulation,compression and encryption of the data packet as well as the ensurement of reliability of the data transmission. We also use some UML diagram to describe the key algorithm of the implementation. To achieve the extensibility and maintainability, we use design pattern to improve the design and the implementation. Finally we develop some programs to test the function of the network engine and describe the result of the test.