Killer Game Programming in Java

An Overview of NetTour3D

Figure 32-2 shows the main objects involved in a NetTour3D world.

The application uses a threaded client/server model, much like the threaded chat application in Chapter 30.

The NetTour3D application is the client. It creates a WrapNetTour3D object to build the world and to handle communication with the TourServer server. The world consists of a checkerboard, background, lighting, and scenery loaded from a tour file with the help of a PropManager object (first used in Chapter 16). No 3D objects or images need to be transferred over the network; all the necessary 3D models are present on the client.

Figure 32-2. Objects in a NetTour3D world

WrapNetTour3D starts a TouristControls object to monitor the client's key presses, which move the client's local sprite (the ones colored blue in Figure 32-1) or adjust the third-person camera. TouristControls is unchanged from the Tour3D example in Chapter 18.WrapNetTour3D sends messages to the server, and the monitoring of messages coming from the server is delegated to a TourWatcher object. Most of these messages will be related to the creation and movement of distributed sprites (the sprites representing other clients, colored orange in Figure 32-1). TourWatcher manages these sprites and updates them in response to the server's messages.

TourServer creates a TourServerHandler thread for each client who connects to it ...