Yeah, you're right. There would be no problem for turn based games like chess for example, but I can imagine you'd want to make real time action games too.

Here's what I propose:

- Each game can say whether it is a peer-to-peer client/server kind of application or a simple client that will use the central server.

- If the game is a p2p game: When creating a game, the one hosting it will leave his IP on the central server for others to see, and the one(s) joining a game will connect to that IP. Then all communication will go directly from peer to peer. The amgc2.exe program will just make sure everyone gets all messages and all that but ultimately the game dll will be responsible for handling all sorts of different situations, in-game chat, etc.

- If the game is a simple client: The one creating a game will just allocate a channel on the central server and anyone will be able to join. Then everybody in a given channel will communicate by sending messages to the central server and it will take care of all the little details.

Hehe, I'm way ahead of you here...

Hehe, Massively Multiplayer Online Pong But you may want to reconsider this. A more appropriate project would be MMOTTT (Massively Multiplayer Online Tic Tac Toe) or something like that unless you're willing to go deep down into the networking code...

Btw, the net enabled version is still quite a few days away...

It would be nice if all the games listed on here would actually include a makefile like the template that Miran provided.
Also chess and duckhunter wouldn't compile.

Still doesn't explain the missing makefiles.
About the includes I'll look into it which might be the problem because I found that out when I updated my amgc2 version and the game I am writing was complaining...

[edit]
Ok duckhunter worked, I don't know what to do to get chess to work. It's a mess with all this depend.sh stuff.....kind of reminds me of building allegro.

Heres what it spits out:

One types `make'

You don't need to run it; I ran make depend before building up the archive.

That's weird though. Your version of gcc doesn't seem to like functions that are declared extern inline. What version of gcc are you using? Also, use gcc instead of g++. It's all C code (except for the interface) and should be compiled as such. gcc will automatically use the proper compiler for the source file you're compiling (g++ is convenient at the linking stage, but even then it's not nescessary).
As a last resort, you can remove the inline declarations from sbr.h (which will slow the code down a bit because the function is no longer inlined).

Init() is always called on game start so if you need the path, you will be able to make your own copy in that function...

Well, I would actually hardcode that to readme.txt. That's the standard name for a readme and I see no reason why anyone would want it otherwise. Actually I could do the same for the icon too (I could assume icon.bmp or icon.tga). The only reason there is a GetIcon() function is because in the first version all games were in the same directory.

Juvinious: Evert's makefile worked for me first time... EDIT: No, wait, I had to change gcc to g++.

In other news, the chatroom already works. We're now getting pretty close to being able to actually play games . There's not enough implemented to be worthy of a public release though, I'd just like to let you know that progress is being made...

Oh my, I saw "AMGC2" and thought it was some obscure package I didn't know about and didn't bother reading "Community Project". I'm here now though, so it's okay. You really should have PMed me or something I'm going to have a look at the source now, and check it out. Someone want to sum up the key points in this thread? I only read the first 50 or so posts (I know up to miran made Linux go).

One of the things I would like to do especially is add the capacity to run non-managed programs also, so the program has minigames and main games. Then I want to assemble the best Allegro games and make a CD.

Linux works, but the games' Makefiles try to construct DLLs

cgames@ryan ~/projects/amgc2/games/tetris $ make
g++ -o tetris.dll tetris.cpp -shared -Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc -s -W -Wall -I../../src/ -lalleg
tetris.cpp: In member function `virtual int Tetris::Logic(int*, int*, float)':
tetris.cpp:175: warning: unused parameter `int*mouse'
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.6/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld: unrecognized option '--enable-auto-import'
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.6/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld: use the --help option for usage information
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [win] Error 1

That worked, thanks.

Okay, so what networking will there be? I think the first thing should be a high-score server. As a requirement, some sort of binary-checking would be required. Not for security purposes, just for making sure a game isn't modified and the old high scores are impossible to beat now.

Is there already a better plan for managing this?

Uhh.. won't be easy to compare the Windows build with the Linux build...

"Securing" the high score and multiplayer means freezing the game version, making a last build of the binaries on every platform, labelling them as the only kosher ones for online play. IMO this hinders development time, and should happen only after game is coded, tested, played, fixed, re-played etc.

"CD compilation" : This is more floppy-sized, and it's not as if there were actually many games to choose from... Where's the point?

There will be a central server with a chatroom where games can be arranged. Then you'll be able to start and register a game, you will be able to list active games and join one. All messages will be sent through this server. This will be most useful for turn based games where only a message or two are sent every now and then. The host program will take care of things like connecting, disconnecting, chat, filtering messages, etc.

Parallel to that the API for a more direct approach will be available. If a game declares it doesn't want to use the services of the server, the host program won't interfere and will let the game do all the networking stuff on its own. The person hosting such a game will create a server, register it with the central server and wait for clients to connect directly to him. The game (in both server and client mode) will then have to do the low level net stuff like handling connections, routing and filtering messages and so on...

We haven't really discussed that yet but I think it shouldn't be a problem. It's going to be the game's responsibility to make sure scores aren't too different between version, although ultimately we can still manually clear the tables if there's a need for that...

I was thinking you were referring to me.

Duck Hunter: no new version sorry, I just added the makefile as someone asked (sorry but I usually use Dev-C++ for developing and tend to forget about makefiles) and changed the icon to be icon.bmp read if Miran wants to go on this direction.

http://elvenprogrammer.themanaworld.org/files/duckhunter.tar.gz

Numbers: no I couldn't find a better name. I was developing a turn based game for amgc2 which I would like to work over the net, but I soon got into some troubles I wasn't able to solve, so I got bored and developed this quick game (30 minutes or so, it could take less time for sure with a better skilled programmmer). I don't know even if this game has got a name, but we used to play it at school when bored, so have some fun with it.

http://elvenprogrammer.themanaworld.org/files/numbers.tar.gz