A newbie question I have to ask, beginning network programming for games?

Question

I'm an absolute newbie in this field and I'm kind of frightened of heading down the wrong path of network programming. I'm trying to build a strong network library for my game engine.

I've looked online and have seen there is a network library with boost, I'd love to use that as I'm really keen on further integrating it with my codebase. But I'm wondering, how would I code and debug such a thing? If I only want to develop on one PC how can I emulate a network environment with a dedicated/peer server and x number of players connected to it?

Answer 1

You can simply start many processes on a single PC.. You can use networking locally (127.0.0.1). Or you can use Virtual Machines.