BTW, I forgot to mention that the book is currently at 25k words. I figure that's a good length for an intermediate/reference text. This is also relevant because I attempted to write about everything listed two quotes down and found that it would have taken at least 2 or 3 times as many words not to mention increased development time in terms of creating the demo, testing it, packaging it, etc... doing this all at once was a little too much for me to do right now quite frankly.
So when you say...
The examples you mentioned sound good, but they're too basic.
I say EXACTLY!
You see, most books or projects of this nature start with exactly the goal you have in mind...
If I were you I'd make a basic, fully working, example game that is built up during the process of reading the book, including entity creation, deleting, moving, controling, but also level loading, chat and the like.
... which is fine if you already understand what joining means, what chat is in the context of GS, how the net engine kicks clients, how it connects initially, how it connects after the fact, what movement means on the network, the need for prediction, etc. That is the purpose of my demos: to help you understand, not just use, each of these individual components you listed below (with the except of chat and movement atm):
the whole setup of joining, chat, kicking, disconnecting, rejoining, and, more importantly, movement interpolation and prediction)
If on the other hand a GS MP developer just dives with nothing but getting a game up and running on the brain, then while they may have initial success, eventually their lack of basic GS concepts and procedures will catch up with them. It's exactly as you say:
Everyone can setup a server and join it, after playing around for a few days. But when it gets to more advanced stuff, like smooth movement and shooting, people fail.
... and thus my book is there to help your really grok those first few days and instead of just having a working server, you also have a working network knowledge which is much more useful in the long run and sets the stage for really understanding movement, chat, and all the rest and their implementations in GS.
It is my belief that people are failing at MP not because it's too difficult or large... it really isn't. It's just that the way it's presented is too advanced. Everyone wants build a MMOG but there is too much focus on the "MMOG" and not enough focus on the "build". This is also meant to be the first book of many. I'm hoping my book(s) will help bring more cohesiveness to the GS MP community and will help more newcomers join our ranks quickly and efficiently. From my book:
My aim is to show you the main components needed to create a multiuser virtual environment, a MUVE, with GameStudio. A Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) is defined in this book as:
1. A Computer Simulation using keyboard and mouse as the input devices and monitors and speakers as the output devices
2. …with a Network Architecture comprised of a Client, Server, and a database applications
3. … which implements a Virtual 3-dimensional space-time
4. … which is Shared by hundreds of simultaneously interacting players all of whom can
5. …Move within the environment,
6. …Interact, and Communicate with each other and the environment.
As the first book in a series, this work lays the foundation towards future works. In principle, this book covers points 1 through 4 of the MUVE definition given above. Book 2 will go on to cover points 5 and 6 and show how to use the basic elements of the GS engine to create basic MUVE systems such as move, chat, and mouse interaction. Books 3 & 4 will then go on and present the most advanced of MUVE development topics including registration, security, server farms, mysql database, scan event, collision events, animation, bots, and more.
Finally, as a intermediate GS programming book (but a beginner networking book), the first 2/3 are a great reference and way to make sure you really know everything needed from GS to go from SP to MP. For example, my glossary list has all the net functions and variables spread throughout the manual in one convenient place. My Event Handler diagram (#14) is unparalleled in showing you each and every event that you can enact in GS. And the Scripted Updates sequence diagram (#21) is equally unparalleled at showing you, at a glace, everything that a programmer can send from client to server and vice versa.
Also I'm missing serverlists. No gamer nowadays would want to connect via command line or IP address...
But as this book is not about games or for gamers, then this is not a high priority for the first book. While gamers indeed will not input IP addresses, researchers, students, prototypers using the GS engine will think nothing of it until it becomes a problem. As well, by the time you need it, you are talking about POST/GET or SQL calls to some database with IP addresses and that is an advanced topic and again, outside the scope of this current book. Fantastic topic for future works, but as it requires the knowledge that I present in the first book and not the other way around, it will have to wait.
