Out of your diagram, it appears to be like such as you solely need to write sport logic and possibly a bit little bit of presentation/UI, and are on the lookout for a chunk of middleware to deal with the remainder.
The aim of a sport engine is to permit designers to concentrate on writing the distinctive sport logic of their sport, and the engine takes care of the remainder. Due to this fact, the factor that’s probably to resolve your downside here’s a sport engine.
However sport engines take management over this system stream away!
Any middleware that solves your downside right here will must take management of this system stream. You won’t be able to jot down a program that begins with int primary(void) and which makes use of networks until you write your individual netcode.
The rationale for that is that netcode for a MUD imposes a bunch of necessities on this system’s stream, and adhering to these necessities is precisely what makes netcode arduous.
Internet-code is at all times multi-threaded
A MUD server wants to have the ability to obtain new log-in requests at any time, and preserve the state of every connection. It additionally must obtain enter from already related gamers, and actively preserve the connections with gamers who usually are not presently sending enter (to detect once they get disconnected ungracefully).
Each implementation of this that I’ve seen or labored on has used threads. One thread listens for brand new connections, every already lively connection will get a thread, and the sport logic runs on one more thread.
Internet-code is a large number of tough edge instances, all totally different
Lots of issues can occur while you attempt to obtain information on a socket. Possibly you get the information you anticipated. Possibly you get information you did not count on (like a hacker testing your defenses by sending malformed packets). Possibly you aren’t getting information in any respect as a result of the connection is gone. If you happen to write your individual netcode, it’s a must to resolve find out how to deal with every of those instances. If you happen to use an engine, you may have out-of-the-box options that simply work, based mostly on business commonplace practices.
You’ll in all probability must persist character/account information
Your gamers will in all probability disconnect and reconnect. Typically this shall be for network-related causes, however very often as a result of people must sleep. Dealing with accounts and authentication your self will take lots longer than you assume it should.
Are there engines that do not limit my sport logic?
Sure, tons. At a fast search, I discovered TinyMud-Server which appears fairly near what you are on the lookout for – nevertheless it’s a whole program that you just add your code to, not only a piece of middleware you can hyperlink with.
If that does not meet your wants, there’s dozens of different engines on the market. A google seek for mud server engine c++ will flip up just a few hits.
What if I actually do need to write my very own?
If you happen to’re actually seeking to write your individual server, I would advocate the next:
- Allocate sufficient time to study. Going from “what’s a socket?” to “writing a MUD from scratch” will take greater than every week, and doubtless greater than a pair months. (It took me two years, however I wrote a few different video games in between.)
- Write a TCP echo server. Comply with a tutorial for making a easy one-connection-at-a-time TCP echo server and shopper. There’s a number of such tutorials on the market: seek for “TCP echo server tutorial C++” to get began.
- Develop that server to a number of connections. As soon as you have created a one-connection-at-a-time server, the subsequent step is to deal with a number of purchasers.
hearon one thread,obtainon one thread per shopper, and at any time when a message is available in, publish it to a queue the place one other thread will see it andshipit again to every shopper. - Flip it right into a chat server with accounts and sign-in. Add a sign-in course of to your preliminary connection and prepend every message that will get re-sent with the account identify.
- Convert the
shipthread into your sport logic. After you have the above all completed, it must be easy to show it right into a MUD by changing the principle “ship message” thread.
