How to write a network game?
- by TomWij
Based on Why is so hard to develop a MMO?:
Networked game development is not trivial; there are large obstacles to overcome in not only latency, but cheat prevention, state management and load balancing. If you're not experienced with writing a networked game, this is going to be a difficult learning exercise.
I know the theory about sockets, servers, clients, protocols, connections and such things.
Now I wonder how one can learn to write a network game:
How to balance load problems?
How to manage the game state?
How to keep things synchronized?
How to protect the communication and client from reverse engineering?
How to work around latency problems?
Which things should be computed local and which things on the server?
...
Are there any good books, tutorials, sites, interesting articles or other questions regarding this?
I'm looking for broad answers, but specific ones are fine too to learn the difference.