Technology --> Networking and Communications

Clean Message API. Use ours or use your own networking libraries. SecurePlay’s message based design makes communications more simple. For developers who want to create or use their existing network libraries, we provide a simple API and reference implementation for your use, study, or modification. IT GlobalSecure will be delivering additional communications implementations and bridges to established communications services to meet the needs of developers who do not wish to do so themselves. Contact us with your specific requirements.

Setting it up. SecurePlay was designed from the beginning to be communications network independent and highly scalable. SecurePlay has a message-based design and completely abstracted communications services. There are only two issues that must be addressed: meeting the communications API to the SecurePlay library and suitably serializing the messages. A single library instance can support different communications services for each player.

Supporting game play between multiple platforms. Conceivably, one player could be coming in using UDP, another via Bluetooth, and still another with HTTP tunneling. At the communications layer, the system is peer-to-peer. The game above may have a highly centralized client-server architecture for an MMORPG or simply two girls playing backgammon.

Communication Proxies. In addition to the basic communications services, IT GlobalSecure wanted to support several forms of added functionality. It did this by creating communications service proxies that wrap actual communications services. There are two current proxies supported:

	Relay, to allow messages to be forwarded to a different location, and,
	Reliability, to provide a reliability layer for any communications service.

Reference Design

SecurePlay includes a reference design for the major communications service elements. As noted above, there is an API (SPAbstractCommunicationsInterface) that connects any comms service to the SecurePlay library. Also, there are several sample serialization tools for SecurePlay messages including a binary encoder and one using XML. IT GlobalSecure also provides a basic communication service sample and communications proxy sample that can be extended and customized by developers.

Relay Service Proxy

Because SecurePlay’s communications model is peer-to-peer, IT GlobalSecure includes support for relaying messages to a third party player. This proxy can wrap any comms service and will forward messages to specified players on to the appropriate comms service. The most basic and obvious application for the relay function is for two players using an HTTP tunnel to communicate with each other, but neither having a publicly accessible IP address. The configuration of communications services and assignment of players to a communications service is external to the SecurePlay library.

Reliable Service Proxy

Certain communications services are not inherently reliable. The nature of SecurePlay transactions and their role in keeping players in the same game does require reliable communications. For less than reliable communications services, SecurePlay provides a standard communications proxy that ensures reliable message delivery. Game developers should be careful using multiple layers of reliable communications as they all do slow communications.

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