[MUD-Dev] Creating a MUD - Overview of design

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Amanda Walker [mailto:amanda at alfar.com]
> On 1/29/02 8:23 AM, Edward Glowacki <glowack2 at msu.edu> wrote:
 
>> In regards to raw performance, yes, UDP is a little better
>> because you don't have to acknowledge every packet, you can just
>> send as fast as the network can handle.  For real-time
>> applications where some loss is acceptable (say streaming video,
>> where you need lots of bandwidth but if you drop a frame or two
>> it's really not going to make all that much difference), UDP
>> would possibly be the better choice.  In short, stick with TCP.

> At the risk of resurrecting past dead horses...
 
> Figure out what your game does and doesn't need, *then* start
> designing a network protocol.

As one of the main culprits behind the reoccurring UDP threads, I
thought I might mention that there are a couple of open source
server emulators for Everquest that have comms layers people might
like to study if reliable messages over UDP interests them. It seems
to use a modified version of selective repeat (ARQ) based
messaging. I confess I haven't looked at them yet, having only just
analysed the code of a passive EQ packet filter (which doesn't
really give the whole picture), but their approach is probably a
sound enough basis for coding your own UDP layer. After all,
Everquest appears to work.

Dan
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