Welcome to Multiplayer Game Development with HTML5. This book will teach you how to develop games that support interacting multiple players in the same game world, and how to perform network programming operations in order to implement such systems. It covers topics such as WebSockets and client-side and server-side game programming in JavaScript with Node.js, latency reduction techniques, and handling server queries from multiple users. We will accomplish this by walking you through the process of developing two actual multiplayer games from start to finish, and it will also teach you about various topics in HTML5 game development in the process. The aim of the book is to teach you to create game worlds for multiple players who want to compete or interact through the Internet using HTML5.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Multiplayer Game Programming, introduces network programming, with emphasis on designing a multiplayer game. It illustrates the basic concepts of multiplayer game development by walking you through the creation of a real-time game of Tic Tac Toe.
Chapter 2, Setting Up the Environment, describes the current state of the art in the JavaScript development world, including JavaScript in the server through Node.js. It also describes the current techniques to manage the development cycle in JavaScript with workflow and resource management tools, such as Npm, Bower, Grunt, and more.
Chapter 3, Feeding a Snake in Real Time, takes an existing single-player Snake game and builds in the ability to play with multiple players in the same game world using the tools heretofore described. Concepts of lobby, rooms, matchmaking, and handling queries from users are also described and demonstrated, which add the functionality to the Snake game. The chapter introduces the most powerful and widely used WebSocket abstraction in the industry today—socket.io.
Chapter 4, Reducing Network Latency, teaches you techniques to reduce network latency in order to create a smooth playing experience. The most common among such techniques—client prediction—is demonstrated and incorporated into the Snake game that is described in the previous chapter. The game server code is also updated for the purpose of performance by introducing a second update loop.
Chapter 5, Leveraging the Bleeding Edge, describes the exciting opportunities that are found in game development on the web platform. It explains WebRTC, HTML5's gamepad, the fullscreen mode, and media capture APIs. Other promised and experimental technologies and APIs are also described here.
Chapter 6, Adding Security and Fair Play, covers common flaws and security vulnerabilities that are associated with network gaming. Here, common techniques are described and demonstrated, allowing you to develop games that provide a playing experience that is free from cheating.