Create Stones

Welcome to network programming in Visual Studio 2010 using C++. This VMK describes what will be covered in the series.

I show how to setup the Network Manager project using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. I also create a menu system that allows the user to choose whether they want to create a Server or a Client application, whether it will use TCP or UDP, and select which port number to use.

In this VMK I create the network manager class which is used throughout the series. In this video I show how to write the code to create a TCP server.

The TCP client code is written in this vmk. Using the client, you will now be able to connect to the tcp server developed in the previous vmk.

In this video I create a function that lets us send a fixed length string using the TCP connection that we established between the client and the server.

I clean up the main function to show more clearly what the Server and Client applications do. Then I add the function to the NetworkManager that lets us receive string data sent over the network. Finally I test the functionality so that it works in both directions, Server to Client and Client to Server.

The sendString and receiveString function calls are updated in this VMK to allow UDP communication to send and receive string data.

In this video I show how to setup the server portion of the network if you plan on using UDP communication.

In this video I wrap up the missing component that is needed to do UDP communication across the network. We finally see how to initialize the _socketAddress member variable.

In this video I replace the loopback IP address (127.0.0.1) with the real IP address used on my local area network. I also explain how to prepare remote computers so that they will be able to run the NetworkManager code.

In this video I cleanup the code used to allocate and deallocate dynamic memory in the network manager using the unique_ptr class. After this smart pointer is introduced, we won't have to call delete explicitly.

In this video I present the different ways in which a WinSock program can be written so that it does not block your main execution thread.

I demonstrate how to make the winsock code not block the TCP server. After switching to non-blocking mode, we explore the error messages that we get with our existing code and then we go through to fix them all to make the code run once again.

In this VMK I update the TCP client code so that it too will run using non-blocking sockets.

In this video I show how to modify the udp server and udp client code so that they both will run using non-blocking sockets.

In this video I introduce the concept of a packet. I show how to form a sample packet that can be used to transmit strings containing different lengths of characters.

In this video tutorial, I show how to decode the string packet that was sent in the previous VMK so that we can see what is being transmitted across the network.

In this video I create a generic GameData class which holds different data types. In the next VMK we'll see how to transmit the contents of the class across the network.

The GameData class created in the previous VMK is converted to a packet in this VMK so that the data contained in the class can be transmitted across the network.

In the previous VMK I left out how to transmit floating point numbers across the network. In this VMK I demonstrate different ways in which this can be done.

The data stored in the GameData class is packaged into a bitfield packet in this VMK to make it easier to transmit and receive data across the network.

In this video I demonstrate a simple chat program that can now be built with all the tools we developed so far.

Unfortunately due to lack of interest in this VMK series from users, I never created anymore videos in this series to show how to actually create this chatter application.

Network Programming