GameNetworkingSockets

Reliable & unreliable messages over UDP. Robust message fragmentation & reassembly. P2P networking / NAT traversal. Encryption. (by ValveSoftware)

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GameNetworkingSockets reviews and mentions

Posts with mentions or reviews of GameNetworkingSockets. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-11-23.
  • Quake 3 Source Code Review: Network Model
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Nov 2024
    GameNetworkingSockets from Valve. Maybe not middleware enough? You have to implement the serialization and a state update strategy yourself.

    Reliable & unreliable messages over UDP. Robust message fragmentation & reassembly. P2P networking / NAT traversal. Encryption.

    https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets

  • How are game servers financed
    1 project | /r/gamedev | 6 Dec 2023
    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
  • Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
    3 projects | /r/gaming | 11 Jul 2023
    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.
  • Steam is very good, but I do wish for more effort in the competition.
    1 project | /r/pcmasterrace | 16 Mar 2023
    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.
  • I FIGURED OUT NETWORKING
    2 projects | /r/godot | 15 Mar 2023
    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.
  • Peer to Peer online multiplayer?
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 18 Feb 2023
    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.
  • What kind of person do I need to find to get help with this issue?
    1 project | /r/gamedev | 1 Feb 2023
    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 )
  • Multiplayer game packaging
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 16 Jan 2023
    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
  • does it cost money to have a small coop server?
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 26 Dec 2022
    There is early NAT piercing support in Valve's GameNetworkingSockets. Check out:
  • What network messaging library do you recommend?
    6 projects | /r/cpp | 6 Dec 2022
    You can also try Valve's GameNetworkingSockets with a serialization of your choice.
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