[whatwg] Real-time networking in web applications and games

[Mark Frohnmayer]

Hi all,

I am currently engaged by InstantAction to develop a minimum-footprint
web API prototype plugin for real-time networked games.  The purpose
of this work is to propose to this standards process a path for
real-time networked client/server and peer-to-peer games and
applications to live as first-class citizens in the browser app
sandbox.

This work has involved separating the lightweight UDP-based connection
protocol from IA's Torque game technologies into a standalone C API
(torque_sockets), and the first drafting of the TorqueSocket
interface, patterned after the WebSocket interface from Google.  Where
WebSocket allows for a persistent TCP connection to a remote host,
TorqueSocket enables in its essence  "connected UDP" connections to a
remote host as well as peer-introduced connections.

The first draft of the TorqueSocket specification can be found here:
http://github.com/nardo/torque_sockets/raw/master/TorqueSocket_API.txt
, which includes the high level requirements, a proposed API spec and
some details on the connection handshake and wire protocol.

The torque_sockets C API definition can be found here:
http://github.com/nardo/torque_sockets/raw/master/torque_sockets_reference_api.h

I was pointed in the spec to
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete.html#devices
and also noticed section 4.11.6.2 Peer-to-peer connections -- both
look like they are works-in-progress.  Is anyone actively working on
this functionality in the HTML5 spec?  Any feedback about TorqueSocket
and the approach would be welcome.

Regards,
Mark