Chapter 7. Connecting Players in Real Time
In This Chapter
Facing the challenges of real-time multiplayer games
Understanding game design: Competition
Choosing your connection options
Hooking up with your peers
Programming: AmuckPuck
Analyzing business aspects
We could have covered multiplayer apps in a single chapter; however, the technologies exposed in the 3.0 SDK warrant two separate discussions. In this chapter we focus on peer-to-peer (P2P) connectivity. Real-time games are well suited to this technology, so our example game will employ peer-to-peer and head-to-head connections. In Chapter 8 we will cover push notification. Even though push notification was not designed for gaming, it makes a perfect fit for turn-based gaming. It's important to cover peer-to-peer first because you will be able to use what you learn in this chapter to add peer-to-peer connectivity to your turn-based games.
In this chapter, you'll examine multiplayer connectivity in the game AmuckPuck. Air hockey has been a hit on the iPhone, probably because it is such a natural fit for the device. We cover it here partly because of this natural fit and the great illustration it serves for this material; however, it's also one of our personal favorites. We are hoping that you will take this example and build some really cool new versions of air hockey that we can all enjoy.
Finally, since there are already so many versions of air hockey currently available, we will consider how to make a game attractive in a replacement ...
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