gamekit over the internet

Question

the gamekit over wifi documentation talks about local wifi and that it's built on top of bonjour. Does that mean it does not work over the Internet, locating user/players in a different subnet, different ISP ... etc

If I need to connect to players/users on the Internet in general I assume I need to setup a server, right ?

Answer 1

YES, Game Kit can be used to connect peers over Internet.

BUT in this case your application must respond to peerPickerController:didSelectConnectionType: and handle all your private handshake protocol to discover peers and establish communication. A web service on your server is also required (unless users type in their IP address).

Good luck Sam!

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References:

Apple IOS Reference Library, Game Kit Programming Guide.

Sanford University Online Course, iPhone Development, Lecture 17: Bonjour, NSStream, GameKit (see at 48 min 28 sec).

Answer 2

there are two things:

• you can use gamekit to play with local devices using GKsessions
• you can use gamekit to play over the internet using GKmatch

both methods are very similar, but it's not the case of just changing a flag - you will have to write code for each. if you are smart, you can make a small interface which can use both, based on a flag. I've implemented it and it works fine