netcode.io VS GameNetworkingSockets

yojimbo/ netcode/ reliable, all developped by Glenn Fidler, author of GafferOnGames

Man-in-the-middling the netcode. From what I can tell, this would work ... but the packets are encrypted. It appears the netcode is largely based on this library, that they sponsor. There appear to be some differences from the "standard" but there are too many similarities to not have a common ancestor. I got pretty far on this, just to at least verify there was encryption. Even if it is not encrypted, it appears to be a custom protocol.

I use netcode.io - if you have read gafferongames posts, this is made by the guy.

You may not be there yet with your developer skills but if you are curious you can have a look at the netcode source code. I'm not sure if they're still using it since the switch to Lumberyard and Amazon Services but it's a really good and strong codebase: https://github.com/networkprotocol/netcode

I found that there is a relatively new protocol called netcode.io that provides UDP-like connection between client-server.

If you want to learn more about networking for game in C++, Glenn Fiedler has great articles from the basics to advanced topics: https://www.gafferongames.com/ He also created a library for client-server networking: https://github.com/networkprotocol/netcode (He has a big name in networking, totally recommend reading his articles if you want to learn more about networking)

Steam does have a NAT traversal/punchthrough service too. It's apparently usable without Steam according to their README on https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets but honestly the only easy to use implementation I know is in Facepunch.Steamworks which requires a SteamID to initialize

Halo was mostly all about single player and early multiplayer/local multiplayer but their online netcode has sucked since Blood Gulch. Lots of games do networking horribly, I have been in gamedev making networking and I hate most of what people do. The ones that have a clean natting, based on enet style reliable UDP channels, RakNet style punch are better (RakNet was good until Facebook bought it). It has come a long way but also fallen back. Valve source netcode (on github) is probably the best and you can check it out here. They started with the best in Quake networking, then to Source.

There are some general APIs that are tied to Steam, like some networking stuff (even then there's an open source library), but the devs are not required to use any of those. If the devs chose to develop exclusively for steam and use their libraries, then that's their own decision.

Keep in mind that if you do go the GodotSteam route, there's GameNetworkingSockets from valve that doesn't have the requirement of needing Steam that you can use for releasing on other platforms. It has the same interface as the Steamworks SDK without requiring the Steamworks SDK.

Their UDP-but-connection-based game networking protocol can be used completely separetely from Steam (it also supports encryption). I think that does not include their relay networking solution, but still.. maybe it's helpful. They also have a TCP-like interface to make it easy to plug into an existing solution.

You can also use the non-Steam parts of that library in any game in case you don't just release on Steam (have a look at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets )

If you want to go the route of using a raw protocol and packing your messages yourself, I suggest to at least have a look at Valve's GameNetworkingSockets either for inspiration of what you might need or even to just use the library: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets

There is early NAT piercing support in Valve's GameNetworkingSockets. Check out:

You can also try Valve's GameNetworkingSockets with a serialization of your choice.