Torque Network Library

Readme

(c) GarageGames 2004

Introduction

Developing computational simulations is a complex, interdisciplinary undertaking. To take a simulation of any sort and run it in a distributed environment introduces a whole new world of problems to overcome. The Torque Network Library provides a robust framework for message passing and efficient state replication, built on a UDP-based protocol.

Features

• Portable
  • Platforms
    • Mac OSX
    • Linux
    • Win32
  • Compilers
    • Xcode
    • GCC
    • Visual C++ 6/7
• Powerful RPC Support
  • Lightweight and efficient - not intended to be a replacement for CORBA.
  • Extremely easy to use - two simple macro definitions and you're done.
  • No complex wrapper classes to work with - write and call your functions as you normally would, and TNL will take care of the rest.
• Robust UDP-based notification protocol
  • Supports fixed or adaptive rate data transfer.
  • Arbitrary sized packet window.
  • Robust connection handshaking.
  • Handles packet loss/out of order delivery.
• Networked Objects
  • Instantiation of objects by name or ID.
  • IDs are assigned to NetGroups, so that only objects relevant to a connection can be references.
• Event Support
  • Unguaranteed, guaranteed unordered, or guaranteed ordered event delivery.
  • Notification to the event when it has been received or dropped by a client.
• Ghost Support
  • Most-recent state information is transmitted to clienst.
  • Scoping of objects to only those clients for which they are relevant - this helps prevent cheating or data sniffing and makes dramatically more effective use of available bandwidth.
  • Prioritization of state updates by arbitrary criteria, such as relative velocity, team, ownership, etc.
• Extensible Protocol Architecture
  • Easy to extend the protocol, for instance, to transmit player move information with every packet, or add voice support.
  • See Torque for examples of additional capabilities that could be added to the protocol.

Compiling TNL

OSX/Xcode

Under the osx subdirectory there is an XCode project. It is set up to build TNL and the TNLTest app.

Linux/GCC

From the top level directory, type

If you have OpenGL and wxWindows installed, and OpenGL support enabled in wxWindows, you can build the wxgui test client/server program with

The wxgui is not built by default.

Windows/VC6/VC7

There are VC6 and VC7 project workspaces in the root directory of the checkout. Individual project files are in their respective directories.

Documentation and Online Resources

The TNL comes with extensive Doxygen documentation. You can access this documentation online at Some URL, or generate it by downloading Doxygen from www.doxygen.org and executing the following command line (assuming you installed Doxygen in the standard place) from the root of your TNL checkout...

• Under Windows:
  "c:\Program Files\doxygen\bin\doxygen.exe" docs\doxygen.html.cfg
• Under Linux or OSX:
  doxygen docs/doxygen.html.cfg

This will produce a set of Doxygen docs in the docs\html subdirectory of your TNL checkout. Please note that these docs may ONLY be distributed to other TNL licensees.