Game Programming, C++, MFC over a network

other things:
1. you could use directplay
2. you could use OpenPlay (open-source, the successor to Apple's NetSprocket game networking interface):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openplay
3. you could use the Torque Network Library, open-source version.
http://www.opentnl.org/

-d

You should look at the data you plan on sending, and the amount of it. Remember that the more information will have a harder time with delivery. Using delta, and reference structures are the way to go, and you will find most games that use real time data facilitate it this way.

Also, if you have multiple objects, then you need to look at giving perhaps an initializer for each client that may need to know, and all of the information to allow them to calculate the motion / action, and correct it with each heartbeat of the server. This way gameplay can be smooth, and interpolated, yet accurate within the amount of ping time allowed from heartbeat to heartbeat.

Think of it this way. The server is playing the game, all of the clients are like dumb terminals just showing the players what is going on in the game. Except in this case, the dumb terminals are doing a lot more than just showing text and moving a simple window.

For example, say a player shoots another player.  The server will receive the command to shoot from player 1. It will then calculate the trace from point a to point B. If player 2 happens to be in the trace, then player 2 will receive a message to show its user an animation of getting shot, and decrement the score. Player 1 will also receive a message showing player 2 twitching from getting shot, and see his score increment as well.

Hope it helps.

--OBWANDO

This may be a bit in depth, but some of the best netcode is in quake base engines which you can get the source here:

http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/

Another good one is UT 2003/2004 code at http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/

Its a little different as its unrealscript, but its still class based, and good to learn.

You can also look at the torque engine as well

http://www.garagegames.com/

--OBWANDO

I'm so glad to see that I got no points, and that obwando also duplicated my listing of the Torque network code... ;)