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broadly speaking, two types of multiplayer games exist:
high tick rate.
these games need to synchronize game states many times per second
with low latency.
these would include action games, sports games, fighting games.
low tick rate.
these games only need to synchronize game states occasionally
with latency having less impact.
these would include card games, strategy games, puzzle games.
this resembles the differentiation between real-time versus turn-based
games, though the analogy falls short.
for example, real-time strategy games run—as the name suggests—in
real-time, but that doesn’t correlate to a high tick rate.
these games can simulate much of what happens
in between player interactions on local machines.
therefore, they don’t need to synchronize game states that often.
if you can choose low tick rates as a developer, you should.
low tick lowers latency requirements and server costs.
sometimes, a game requires high tick rates of synchronization.
for those cases, solutions such as firestore don’t make a good fit.
pick a dedicated multiplayer server solution such as nakama.
nakama has a dart package.
if you expect that your game requires a low tick rate of synchronization,
continue reading.
this recipe demonstrates how to use the
cloud_firestore package
to implement multiplayer capabilities in your game.
this recipe doesn’t require a server.
it uses two or more clients sharing game state using cloud firestore.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
1. prepare your game for multiplayer
write your game code to allow changing the game state
in response to both local events and remote events.
a local event could be a player action or some game logic.
a remote event could be a world update coming from the server.
to simplify this cookbook recipe, start with
the card template that you’ll find
in the flutter/games repository.
run the following command to clone that repository:
open the project in templates/card.
info note
you can ignore this step and follow the recipe with your own game
project. adapt the code at appropriate places.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
2. install firestore
cloud firestore is a horizontally scaling,
NoSQL document database in the cloud.
it includes built-in live synchronization.
this is perfect for our needs.
it keeps the game state updated in the cloud database,
so every player sees the same state.
if you want a quick, 15-minute primer on cloud firestore,
check out the following video:
to add firestore to your flutter project,
follow the first two steps of the
get started with cloud firestore guide:
the desired outcomes include:
you don’t need to write any dart code in this step.
as soon as you understand the step of writing
dart code in that guide, return to this recipe.
<topic_end>
<topic_start>
3. initialize firestore
open lib/main.dart and import the plugins,
as well as the firebase_options.dart file
that was generated by flutterfire configure in the previous step.
<code_start>
import 'package:cloud_firestore/cloud_firestore.dart';
import 'package:firebase_core/firebase_core.dart';
import 'firebase_options.dart';
<code_end>
add the following code just above the call to runApp()
in lib/main.dart:
<code_start>
WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
await Firebase.initializeApp(
options: DefaultFirebaseOptions.currentPlatform,
);
<code_end>
this ensures that firebase is initialized on game startup.
add the firestore instance to the app.
that way, any widget can access this instance.
widgets can also react to the instance missing, if needed.
to do this with the card template, you can use
the provider package
(which is already installed as a dependency).
replace the boilerplate runApp(MyApp()) with the following:
<code_start>
runApp(
provider.value(
value: FirebaseFirestore.instance,
child: MyApp(),
),
);
<code_end>
put the provider above MyApp, not inside it.
this enables you to test the app without firebase.
info note