So... I started playing around with multiplayer some years ago and recently I'm getting back into having some fun with it when I got a new idea I would like to test for fun.

As the title says "peer2peer" connections popped in my mind and I would like to test if this is even possible for realtime multiplayer gaming. I'm not planning on making a game, just a tool for others to use. I just want to experiment with the concept and (if it works) polish it into a usable tool.

If it works the idea is aimed as a free tool for indies in general that might want to take on something more ambitious than basic multiplayer, but cant afford massive server/bandwith costs.
Normally indie games cant afford anything past traditional de-centralized client/server multiplayer environments. And at most a centralized serverlist.

As the number of clients grows, so does the costs of a centralized server farm. Subscription fees are a great way to pay for these costs but clients wont usually be inclined to pay a subscription fee unless it is the next big AAA title on the market so that isnt really an option for indies.

The advantage of a P2P networking solution would be that as the client base grows, so does the network. The main idea is that all clients would at the same time form part of the server farm while they are connected. So as the player base grows so does the bandwidth and size of the server farm. And at no cost for the indie developers!

This idea came to me during a programming course I am attending when we started to work with connections. It was the first time I had worked with connections that returned a "connection pointer" that would allow for multiple connections at the same time.

I would like a couple of suggestions to point me in the right direction to get started. In gaming environment the only experience I have is with gamestudio. And in multiplayer the only experience I have was at first with built-in gamestudio multiplayer, and then moved on to use Anet a few years ago. The problem with these two is that none of their connection functions return pointers, so they cannot handle multiple simultaneous connections. If anyone could point me to a tool for 3DGS that would allow multiple connections it would be great to get me started. My plan is (after some initial experimentation) create an opensource project that would be a great tool for indie developers to use! (if I can get this idea to work)

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions?