cool, ive finally got around to working with it and am quite pleased. most of the features I do on my own instead (entity management, etc) but just being about to send the variables and functions works pretty well for me.

@lostclimate: Nice to see another happy ANet user.

Ok, I'm already planning the features for the next (and maybe last) update:

new functions:
- enet_send_to(char data, var length, var clientid) //sends data (no need to be zero terminated) to any client or server. On the destination host the RECEIVE_EVENT is called with the data in the msg parameter. This allows much more efficient networkprogramming.
- enet_send_struct(void* data, var size, var clientid) //sends a struct (Lite-C only)

other changes:
- enet_send_pos/ang get a new parameter called mode. It allows to prevent sending the Z_Coordinate and allows to prevent sending the Tilt and Roll angle.
- enet_send_string() can also be used to send entity strings.

And of course 3DVoIP will be implemented (this time really :D).

Btw. I'm already working on 3D VoIP again and it seems that I have found the bug that always blocked my work. I already posted in BugHunt, so lets see

If you have any feature requests tell them now, please! This will possible be the last chance because I want this version to be the last one with new features. Other versions will only contain bug fixes.

so i can just include the new dll? or i'll need to make changes to script?

Is there a chance to provide a demo with exe and free c files, to test it in action very fast?
What about a demo of a simple game - maybe, the 3D Chat is already such a thing - which can handle the maximum of players?
Put a big watermark on the screen and a link in the menu to your tool, and it is a great advertisement. Even better is a permanent server. (I hope you don't mind my dreams.)
The best would be a game demo which uses all the given features, though. (Although, it is unrealistic to ask for that. )

All you have to change will be that the enet_send_pos/ang will have a 3rd parameter => everywhere you call that function in the script, you will have to add a 3rd parameter. That's all.

@Pappenheimer: The new demos are currently in internal beta test. They show most of the features of ANet Professional. I think I will start with an own multiplayer game after finishing this last update. It will have a playable demo so you will see ANet in action.

That sounds very good!
I'm curious to see this all in action with many players.
Could be a nice event in this community, like that one with the game of Schokokeks.

I had 3 new ideas for features:

- PLAYERNAME_EVENT ...is called when a client changed his playername
- enet_lock(var* variable) ...locks a variable/array/string/struct
- enet_send_var() ...allows also to send variables of type double/long/int/float/char

The enet_lock() function is very important when it comes to make your game cheating secure.

Imagine the following: In an array you store the health of all players. Now a bad guy could hack a client application and use an enet_send_ function to change the array content. If you used enet_lock() and locked the array, the array can't be changed through a send function.

The new version 1.2.4.3 is ready!

What's new?
The new versions has a lot of major bug fixes and improvements.
There are also 3 new example scripts added to the downloadsite: voip, ftp and file transfer

Where to get it?
You can get the new demo here.

Hints:
Read the section updates/changes in the manual before using the new update.
Also the default.c file has been changed so download it again, please.
Please notice that this is not the version with the features I talked in the last posts (these are the planned features of the next update).


Have fun!

for example if i use the http post, and call a php that will echo "hello" how do i recieve that on a string..?

Dark_samurai,

I'm not sure if you're yet thinking of improved entity management, but I think here's where many people get frustrated with gamestudio's and now anet's system.

The problem we face is that in a large zone all entities have to be created on all of the connected clients, severely limiting the number of possible connections. Yet, typically a player will be well out of range of most of the other players and NPCs and so does not need to be instructed to create all those entities, until they come within, say, a certain distance.

The workaround that I am aware of currently is to use ent_createlocal for all of the entities and then to create all of the backend synchronization functions over from scratch. The built in functions are unuseable for any server zone with more than maybe 50 or 100 connections. It's an unfortunate waste of the feature set if a large scale project has to recreate them.

I'm wondering if you could make a third option to the ent_create and ent_createlocal functions that creates the entity on the server and on a specific set of clients, as given by an array of IDs. Changing the list of IDs would add or remove entities only from the clients that are new to the list or who have left it. That way, the designer has control over which clients are included for a particular entity and we can use the features of the existing entity synchronization system.

I believe that most MMOs do something of this sort. The zone level is divided into a grid of areas. At certain intervals, the server checks what area the client is in and updates that client with the entities that are in that area and each adjacent area. (So you don't get near the edge of an area and see nothing on the other side until you step over.)

I don't think that thousands of connections are possible without this feature. (Let me know if I'm thinking correctly.)