TUTORIAL – Create realtime multiplayer games using Player.IO (PART 1 – Server)

[ part 1 ] – [ part 2 ] – [ part 3 ] – [ part 4 ]

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This multi parts tutorial explains how to produce a multiplayer game using Player.IO’s SDK (Now called Yahoo Games Network SDK.)

Creating a multiplayer game, especially real-time, is always a daunting task for developers. Yet, the player.io API simplifies the task and makes it actually very easy. I’m going to explain in this tutorial how to produce a game using the API. The language used will be Actionscript, but the SDK supports other languages like Objective-C, Java (for mobile), Unity, C#. The server has to be implemented with C#, but it’s a lot easier than you’d expect.

I’m sure you’re all expert programmers, and have ways to optimize your code to create wonders, so in this tutorial I will just explain the bare absolute minimum to create a simple game.

STEP 1 – Get an account on Yahoo Games Network

As a shortcut, I always type “player.io” in the url bar because that’s what sticks to my mind. Since the company has been bought by yahoo, it shows a link to redirect to gamesnet.yahoo.com. You then proceed in signing-up with a new account with the link in the top right.

STEP 2 – Setup a game’s server

Once you’ve completed the signing-up, your first step is to setup your game’s server.

• Click on My Games
• + Create New Game
• Choose a name (ex: “Dobukiland”)
• You should see a message like this:

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 Your game has been created!

Your next step should be to connect to your game. First, download the appropriate client library from our downloads section, and use your game id to authenticate to the Backend Game Services.

Dobukiland Game ID: dobukiland-ymhkxklve0qg9ksunqrsq

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Ok, so we’re done with part 1 of this tutorial

(wait, what?!)

Right, you can actually skip the whole process of writing your server code, compiling your dll, testing locally, re-uploading to the server ect… Normally that’s what you would do to create your game, but remember in this tutorial, I’m only showing the bare minimum. Using the steps above, you’ve already been provided a server. It’s a very dumb one that simply broadcasts messages that you send to everybody in the same room. But that’s actually all you need to create a realtime multi-player game.

For more advance user, I will write more on setting up a local server in the later part of this tutorial. But for now, we’ll just go to the next step: Writing the client code.

 Next >> TUTORIAL – Create realtime multiplayer games using Player.IO (PART 2 – Client)

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[ part 1 ] – [ part 2 ] – [ part 3 ] – [ part 4 ]