Flash MX 2004 Games

22 Multi-player Games Using Sockets

Although multi-player games are possible using ASP pages or another server-based script engine, the best technique to use is a server-side listening program that exploits the use of sockets. From Flash 5 sockets have been supported and provide the fastest and most reliable way to pass and process real-time data. In this chapter we are going to look at creating the server-side program using MFC, Microsoft Foundation Classes, on a Windows server. For many readers this will be unfamiliar territory, but we are in the ‘Flash for boffins’ section! The first part of this chapter assumes a reasonable knowledge of C++. There are lots of good C++ books available, a few of which are listed in the bibliography. To use ...