Programming online games...

I've been using C/C++ for a while now, and I'd like to create an online game. I've created plenty of single-player (offline) games already, and a few online ones in other languages, so don't think I'm completely new to this.

What I'm looking for is a library/class/something that will let me use sockets and winsock, but that takes care of all of the (excessive) overhead. I want to get right into programming with sockets, and don't have the time to concentrate on learning the whole winsock API.

Thanks!

If your game is for the Win32 platform, use DirectPlay. Since DX8, this API has a very good design. It also helps you to debug your application, which is - in my opinion - the most time-consuming part of a multiplayer game implementation.

1) “RakNet Engine”: looks very promising, the feature list is huge. But the free version of it will only allow 90 people to connect to a server at a time, and I am not sure what this means exactly, but I should do some research on it. The freeware license to have unlimited access is $90.
2) "HawkNL": This Engine looks pretty good too, but I am not sure how much tutorials there are to learn it. There is only the API html document, so I am not sure if it will be easy to learn.
3) "GNE": This one looks promising too. It uses a lot of C++ features like templates, smart pointers, inheritance, and so on in its design. But the only drawback is that it needs the HawkNL library to be installed for it to work.

Quote:

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and I am not sure what this means exactly, but I should do some research on it

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Do you understand the server/client model? A computer runs a program that accepts connections from other computers (the server) and manages all the computers connected. If you go to www.gamedev.net and search in the articles for "server" you could probably find a better explanation.

edit: 90 people on 1 server is quite a lot

Sorry for the confusion frenchfry164; I don't know where I got that 90 number.

The limit WAS 31 clients, but apparently they have removed that limit now.

Also I kind of have an idea of the Server/Client model, but I still need to learn some more. Thanks for the link I will look through gamedev.net as soon as I am done with my homework.