Progress as of 6/3/2005

GTADS hasn't had much code updated in the past few days due to my own busy schedule and also because of planning in the deployment of the client. Since the server is now up the the point where it can accept users and keep them in a connected, I want to have the client have a login screen and allow it to connect and hit connected mode. Once there, Chatrooms and Game sessions will be the next item on the agenda finishing up the chatserver portion of the project and allowing me to work on the client.

What to expect in the first alpha release of the client

The first alpha release of GTADS will be strictly a client server chat program, there will be no game funtionality. Everyone is encouraged to test these features as they are 100% of what the dedicated server does. All game related items, including the proxy and game advertise spoof will be on the client. For GTADS to push out a quality beta there will need to be extensive testing on the server to stress test load, network throughput, and any sort of crashes that may happen on the client or server. The projected release date for the alpha release is set for June 10th and I will try to keep that date.

There will be some documentation on the actual mechanics of allowing TCP/IP session based games to run on GTADS but I can tell you a little bit on how it will work when implemented. The proxy, which will reside on the client will serve as a connector between different players in a game session. On each computer the client will run this proxy. The proxy will also serve as a player spoofer, as the game will think that each player is connecting from 127.0.0.1 but on a different port. The proxy's job is to translate each incoming packet to the correct host's ip address. In doing this we will essentially have an extra layer above tcp/ip direct play. Most of the work in this will have to go into figuring out what packets initiate a game and in GTA2's case, which packets advertise a game in its game manager.