Programming Multiplayer Games
Andrew Mulholland
Wordware Pub
I need to counter the ridiculous 1-star ratings given by reviewers who don't know what they're talking about. A 1-star review is for a computer book that has completely broken code that will not compile, numerous typos and grammatical errors, and/or out of date material--none of which describes this book. A 1-star rating is for a door stop, which this book is not. Unfortunately, the bad reviews (written by people who are demanding "Create your own MMO in 7 easy steps") led to weak sales and the book going out of print, just when I need it to teach a course on this subject. 

This book, which I found from a used reseller, thoroughly teaches low level socket programming using the Winsock library, which is the basis for all networked Windows games on the market (including MMOs like World of Warcraft). You need to know how to program Winsock at the lowest level, and how to handle multithreading, in order to get a job in the field doing this sort of work. There is no other book on the market that covers this subject, and poor sales means there is not likely to be any in the future (at least that cover programming in this much detail).

The content has been greatly strengthened from the first edition, with very focused chapters on SQL and PHP without taking up too many pages. The authors do try to show how to build a portal for a multiplayer game, which would be used to launch the game itself. What they're doing here is trying to show how a service like Battle.net works, by hosting live chat, account management, and launching game sessions. The chapters on low-level socket programming are exactly what I need. The 2DLib was not very useful since I focus on DirectX, so I ignored the sample game altogether.

As an instructor who needs this out of print book, I've had to use an e-book service in order to support it through the campus bookstore. I'm sorry that Wordware has such a bad habit of canning books too soon (a common practice for this publisher), while academia needs books to remain viable for several years in order to consider them for adoption. This is a tough subject for a niche course.