snow

Hello!

I would like to know the basic of a client that searches for local servers like you see in multiplayer games such as warcraft, quake etc.

Is server constantly broadcasting (with UDP) and clients just wait for it... or is it something else?

tempest

Look up what a "port scanner" is, this is what is used by Games to detect a running games server (on the game servers port) on the local network...

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Dameon

Finding game servers is not a good use of a port scanner...

For what games refer to as a "LAN" game, the server typically sends broadcast packets with the server info. This is dandy for most LAN setups, but once that packet tries to leave the network, too bad. For "Internet" games, a master server is contacted by the clients looking for games. Depending on implementation, the server can store all the server info, or just the contact info for the server (in which case the client will send an info request to the server to get name/player count/etc). The latter works fairly well, seeing as you also get a ping out of it.

Since you are trying to interop with existing games, open up a packet sniffer such as Ethereal or Ettercap and try to figure out the protocol. Should be fairly simple. Some of the games mentioned likely have online docs somewhere on the subject.

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snow

Ok just wanted to know the principle

Thank you both!