I need to connect my networking layer to a version of my game running as an authoritative simulation (both running on the same Linux box)... Am I right in thinking that I should use the same socket protocol (hand rolled reliable, ordered, UDP) my remote players are using to communicate to my network layer and that "localhost" magic will just bypass most the network stack? Or should I be looking at pipes or shared memory?

Cheers,

James.

Don't know the details of inner Linux network stacks, but from what I heard, it shouldn't make a lot of difference between eg pipe and localhost comm.

Since network comm is already existing (or at least definitely needed), it looks to me that re-using that would be the first experiment you should do, as it drops the entire pipe/shared mem code.

Also, it makes having the server at a different machine possible, if you ever want that.

Thanks folks, sounds like reusing my UDP code will work as well as save extra code, testing and potentially debugging 2 different socket types. My UDP implementation should handle dropped packets and the (not yet finished) congestion management at the player-to-network-layer point should start backing off if the network-layer-to-simulation point starts backing up, dropping packets, etc.

Thanks again :)