Anet: A Network Game Programming Library

Last updated: 22 August 1998

A Rose by Any Other Name...

The public name for Activision's online game service was ActiveLink. It is referred to by Anet in this doc, and by ActiveNet in some places in the code.

Purpose

Anet was designed to help multiplayer games reach the widest possible audience, lets users play against the widest possible choice of opponents online.

It supports many kinds of connections: LAN, Internet, modem, direct serial connection, and even proprietary gaming networks such as Heat, MPlayer, Microsoft Game Zone and Dwango. (All of these are gone as of 2001 except the Zone.)

What is Anet?

Anet has three main parts:

An Internet game server where people playing over the Net can find opponents. The game server is a program which we can distribute free of charge, and will be run by major Internet Service Providers and hobbyists; a tracker program will maintain an up to date list of all servers.
An API (like Microsoft's DirectPlay or Apple's NetSprocket) which takes care of the dirty part of networking (like dialing the modem or connecting over the 'Net), and lets the game programmer concentrate on the game.
A client program, or shell, which lists all of the games currently being played on the server (MercNet, Dark Reign, etc.), lets players chat with each other before choosing a game, and then launches the appropriate game. (This part is optional; each game can be played without the client program. It is the only part that has not yet been shipped with a product.)

What platforms are supported?

Windows 95
About eight products have been shipped using Win95 Anet. Special effort was taken to make sure that porting games between Microsoft's game networking library and Anet is reasonably easy.
Linux
Linux is used for our game servers, and as a result, a Linux version of the Anet library is available. Only the Internet transport is supported on Linux.
Macintosh
One shipping product, Mac Netmech, uses an older version of the SDK. Support for this platform could be revived if desired.
Java
The Java support is experimental. It's implemented as a wrapper around the native library. Right now, it's only implemented for Windows 95.
DOS
One product (DOS MercNet) is shipping with Anet support built in, but it is unlikely anyone will want this version of the SDK, so we no longer support it.

Will Anet games work with online services like TEN and Mpath?

Yes - it's pretty easy! All it takes is for the game to be able to use our commandline launcher.

What does Anet look like to the Programmer?

To get started using Anet, the programmer needs the Anet SDK, usually distributed as ANETSDK.ZIP.

Refer to the top-level documentation index for programmer information. includes pointers to the Anet API Overview and Function Reference, which explains how to use Anet in a game, and the demo applications.

The program gtest is provided with the SDK as a tool for the programmer to play with the API interactively and learn how it behaves without having to compile any C programs.

Developer Support

Developers should contact Dan Kegel for support and additional example code if needed. Often just a couple minutes talking over questions can save a great deal of time.

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