Using socket programming in games

Socket programming is one of the earliest mechanisms for transferring data between end-to-end connections. Even now, if you are comfortable writing socket programming, it is a much better option for a relatively small game than using third party solutions, as they add a lot of extra space.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you will need a Windows machine and an installed version of Visual Studio.

How to do it…

In this recipe, we will find out how easy it is to write sockets:

struct sockaddr_in
{
      short      sin_family;
      u_short      sin_port;
      struct      in_addr sin_addr;
      char      sin_zero[8];
};
 
int PASCAL connect(SOCKET,const struct sockaddr*,int);
    target.sin_family = AF_INET; // address family Internet
    target.sin_port = htons (PortNo); //Port to connect on
    target.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr (IPAddress); //Target IP

    s = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP); //Create socket
    if (s == INVALID_SOCKET)
  ...