Networking
Communication between servers and clients is the backbone of a successful mod implementation.
Read an overview of why networking matters and the basic strategies in thinking about networking.
There are a variety of techniques provided by Forge to facilitate communication - mostly built on top of [[1]].
The simplest, for a new mod, would be SimpleImpl, where most of the complexity of the netty system is abstracted away. It uses a message and handler style system.
Overview
There are two primary goals in network communication:
1. Making sure the client view is "in sync" with the server view
- The flower at coordinates X, Y, Z just grew
2. Giving the client a way to tell the server that something has changed about the player
- the player pressed a key
The most common way to accomplish these goals is to pass messages between the client and the server. These messages will usually be structured, containing data in a particular arrangement, for easy sending and receiving.