Learning How to Make a Peer to Peer Zune Game

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I wish I had Dan Waters’ creativity. Recently Dan posted a how to video to introduce the peer to peer Zune game he created. There are a couple of points Dan makes about this example that make it a good learning project.

  • Zune games are perfect for peer-to-peer because of their relatively low processing power and the lack of a central server (unless it's a Zune).
  • Peer-to-peer means everyone is running an instance of the same program - there is no client or server.
  • Thusly, to implement a lobby, you need to have Create and Join Session functionality in the same program.
  • Make ample use of the available NetworkSession events (GamerJoined, GameStarted, SessionEnded) etc.
  • This sample shows how to send a network packet between peers with a Vector2 in it. More complex thinking will be necessary to implement a message handling system.

This is the first of a series on this Zune project that Dan will be posting so you will want to bookmark his blog.