VGSockets

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Current features
3. Future features
4. Examples
5. Build and usage
6. To-Do

Introduction

VGSockets stands for Video Game Sockets, and as the name suggests it is a library designed to make networking in video games and socket programming easier.

Current features

• Basic socket functions implemented like bind, listen, accept, connect, send, and recv.
• Automatic sever/client initialization function added to compress bind, listen, accept, and connect functions into one line.
• Cross-platform design for Windows and Linux.

Limitations

• Only TCP connections have been implemented as of now, but UDP will be added.

Simple client-server example

All examples are in the examples folder
server.c:

#include <stdio.h>
#include "vgs.h"

int main(void)
{
    printf("Initializing VGS...\n");
    InitVGS();
    
    printf("Starting up server...\n");
    Socket server = StartupServer(8080, 1);
    if (server == STATUS_ERROR) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Server started!\n");
    
    printf("Waiting for client...\n");
    Socket new_socket = AcceptClient(server);
    if (new_socket == STATUS_ERROR) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Client connected!\n");

    char buff[256];
    printf("Waiting for data...\n");
    int valread = RecvData(new_socket, buff, 256);
    if (valread <= 0) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Data received: %s. \nNumber of bytes received: %d\n", buff, valread);

    printf("Sending data...\n");
    int valsend = SendData(new_socket, "Hello client!", 14);
    if (valsend <= 0) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Successfully sent! Number of bytes sent: %d\n", valsend);

    printf("Closing server and VGS...\n");
    CloseSocket(new_socket);
    CloseSocket(server);
    CloseVGS();
    return 0;
}

client.c:

#include <stdio.h>
#include "vgs.h"

int main(void)
{
    printf("Initializing VGS...\n");
    InitVGS();

    printf("Starting up client...\n");
    Socket client = StartupClient(8080, "127.0.0.1");
    if (client == INVALID_SOCKET) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Successfully connected to server!\n");

    printf("Sending data...\n");
    int valsent = SendData(client, "Hello server!", 14);
    if (valsent < 0) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Data sent! \nNumber of bytes sent: %d\n", valsent);

    char buff[256];
    printf("Waiting for server...\n");
    int valread = RecvData(client, buff, 256);
    if (valread <= 0) {
        return -1;
    }
    printf("Data received: %s. Number of bytes received: %d\n", buff, valread);

    printf("Closing client and VGS...\n");
    CloseSocket(client);
    CloseVGS();
    return 0;
}

Build and usage

Download the source code for the repository or use git clone https://github.com/BrickSigma/VGSockets.git VGSockets.

Enter the VGSockets/src directory and run make. This will generate the static library for VGSockets.

To use in your projects, add the vgs.h header and libvgs.a files to your project root directory as shown bellow:

.
└── Project/
    ├── src/
    │   ├── server.c
    │   └── client.c
    ├── include/
    │   └── vgs.h
    ├── lib/
    │   └── libvgs.a
    └── Makefile

And your Makefile should be like this:

CC := gcc
SRC := src/
LDFLAGS := -L./lib -lvgs
INCLUDE := -I./include

ifeq ($(OS), Windows_NT)
	LDFLAGS += -lws2_32
	EXT += .exe
else
	EXT += .out
endif

build:
	$(CC) $(SRC)server.c -o server$(EXT) $(INCLUDE) $(LDFLAGS)
	$(CC) $(SRC)client.c -o client$(EXT) $(INCLUDE) $(LDFLAGS)

Use -lvgs to link the library, and make sure on Windows to link WinSock32 by adding -lws2_32 to your linker flags.

Note: if you are on Linux you can run sudo make install to add the library and header globally. To uninstall run sudo make uninstall.

To-Do

✅ Add error return codes for each function call.
✅ Add option to turn on/off error messages.
✅ Add select poll function variant.
✅ Add timeout based recv function.
✅ Add custom VGSocket datatype to allow Recv to timeout. (Removed)
✅ Add UDP support.

• Add global error values for user reference.
• Add support for threads.
• Create documentation/cheetsheet for functions and structures.