Darkstar: The Java Game Server

By Brendan Burns
August 2007
Pages: 77
Series: Short Cut
Format: PDF
ISBN 10: 0-596-51484-0 | ISBN 13: 9780596514846
(3) (Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

PDF description

So, you have a great idea for the next big multiplayer game. Maybe it's a virtual world based on your favorite sci-fi television show. Or maybe it's an online bowling league for you and your friends. Regardless, the challenge of building a networked multiplayer computer game goes far beyond having a great idea. It can be so significant that it prevents great games from becoming reality.

Darkstar breaks down this barrier of complexity. It provides an easy-to-use library of functions that handles the challenging aspects of networked game development for you. Further, it provides a robust, industrial-strength server that can scale with your game as it grows in popularity. With Darkstar, you can quickly turn your idea for a multiplayer game into a (virtual) reality.

Featured customer reviews

Great for Beginniners, February 04 2009

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Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

I am taking a college Java class, and when I told my professor I was interested in game servers (http://www.esgameservers.com) , he recommended this book to me. The book is easy to follow in most places, but a few sections are a tad ambiguous. This is a good book for beginners, but I think if I knew a lot about servers and Java, I would have found it a tedious read.

Okay for starters, but frustrating with errors, January 09 2008

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Submitted by Anonymous [Respond | View]

This book was good for getting started with the basics and there was some different information than the tutorials that come with the sgs download. The custom authentication section was worthwhile. The channels information was inaccurate and in fact, gives you the idea that you are sending information directly from client to client even though it obviously is going through the server. A few pages ran off the page when printed out. Quite a number of errors in the code, which is frustrating to have to debug an a code section just to get it to work.

For the price, I'm not too disappointed since it led me in the right direction on a couple of points but I definitely expected it to be cleaner and more accurate. You can find good information in the tutorials and forums. I can't recommend this book due to the problems.

Good introduction to Project Darkstar?, January 07 2008

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Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

While the book was as the previous reviewer states a pretty good step by step tutorial. I find the Lab-7201: Project Darkstar presentation shown in May at JavaOne more informative. In addition to this, simple mistakes in the code make you wonder if the author syntax checked his program. At 10 dollars it might be worth it if you are really struggling with the idea of persistance, managed objects, references and bindings, but i would try looking through the darkstar forums for awnsers.

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Good introduction to Project Darkstar!, September 05 2007

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Submitted by Doug [Respond | View]

It has been a really good, light-weight introduction to getting a client/server up and running with Darkstar. It lets you get past that frustrating initial feeling you get when trying to deal with a complex new programming library, and you don’t want to dig through the project docs which are meant as a comprehensive reference as opposed to a step-by-step tutorial which is what the O’Reilly shortcuts book was about.

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