hi folks -- i''m currently in the planning stages of a multiplayer game, hopefully capable of scaling from 2 to maybe 200 players, depending on hardware etc. i just have a few questions. is it better to write my own protocol tailored for the game or just fudge one using the existing ones? specifically, i''m wondering if i would worry about my own packet headers, packet mangling, etc or just send all i need in a logical game packet as a UDP datagram and hope it gets there, with some basic error checking on the receiving end? in another thread there is some discussion about combining protocols for one game. since most of you feel that UDP is the way to go it sounds like implementing my own protocol over UDP is the way to go. however that''s just extra server overhead and i''d rather avoid that if possible. i suppose my own protocol would be pretty high-priority, and i can implement built-in anti-cheating mechanisms. maybe i''m just lazy. what do y''all think?

There''s different levels and types of protocols....

What existing protocol would you use?

most likely UDP/IP, possibly TCP/IP for some things like admin commands, chat text, etc. the physics model (if you want to call it that) is simple so dropped packets aren''t too much of an issue.

a custom protocol certainly seems to be the way to go, now that i''ve given it much more thought.

does anyone have any anecdotes, horror stories, success stories, or other useful tidbits of information? anything will help, especially common pitfalls to avoid.

thanks for your time, guys!