Learning XNA 3.0

Summary

• You can easily add multiplayer functionality to a game by allowing multiple players to play on the same machine and implementing a split screen. Each split screen view will typically have its own camera and be independent of the other views.

• The Viewport class represents the area on the 2D screen to which the projection of the camera will be mapped. To implement a split screen, you modify the Viewport property of the graphics device to draw each camera's view and projection on only a portion of the game window rather than the entire surface of the game window.

• An important decision to make when developing networked games is to determine which type of network architecture to implement (peer-to-peer, client/server, or a hybrid). Factors that go into determining which is the best choice include the number of players and the number of objects that need to be updated or continually tracked.

• The NetworkSession class represents a single session of a network game. This class keeps track of all players in the session, the host of the session, and other properties related to the session itself.

• Communication between PCs, Xbox 360s, or Zunes is done by writing packets using the PacketWriter class and reading packets using the PacketReader class.

• A packet is a single communication (which may contain a variable amount of data) sent from one entity to another on a network.

• The GamerServicesComponent allows your networked game to make use of gamer services windows and messaging throughout the ...