I have been thinking of making a real-time game with WebSockets for the web. I know how to use Node.js, and it is tempting to make it on there. But everywhere I look, C++ seems to be the popular server language because of its speed.

Should I give making it in Node.js a go, and worry about C++ later, or should I learn C++ now and make it in there from scratch?

I have been thinking of making a real-time game with WebSockets for the web. I know how to use Node.js, and it is tempting to make it on there. But everywhere I look, C++ seems to be the popular server language because of its speed.

Should I give making it in Node.js a go, and worry about C++ later, or should I learn C++ now and make it in there from scratch?

• javascript
• c++
• node.js
• performance
• server

• Unless you're doing CPU-bound work, Node.js is probably fine. – SLaks Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 2:39
• @SLaks, say I was making Agar.io, which would be better? – Luke Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 2:40

2 Answers 2

If you do decide to go the C++ route (and that does offer the best performance of any language), there's this great open source Websocket library that does all the heavy lifting for you. Its header-only and uses just boost. It es with example code and documentation: http://vinniefalco.github.io/

Here's a plete program that sends a message to the echo server:

#include <beast/websocket.hpp>
#include <beast/buffers_debug.hpp>
#include <boost/asio.hpp>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main()
{
    // Normal boost::asio setup
    std::string const host = "echo.websocket";
    boost::asio::io_service ios;
    boost::asio::ip::tcp::resolver r(ios);
    boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket sock(ios);
    boost::asio::connect(sock,
        r.resolve(boost::asio::ip::tcp::resolver::query{host, "80"}));

    using namespace beast::websocket;

    // WebSocket connect and send message using beast
    stream<boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket&> ws(sock);
    ws.handshake(host, "/");
    ws.write(boost::asio::buffer("Hello, world!"));

    // Receive WebSocket message, print and close using beast
    beast::streambuf sb;
    opcode op;
    ws.read(op, sb);
    ws.close(close_code::normal);
    std::cout <<
        beast::debug::buffers_to_string(sb.data()) << "\n";
}

Google's V8 engine used for Node.js does a great job piling effective machine code. Javascript gets good enough performance to be used in games, aside from special attention required on memory/garbage collection., and this lead to a lot of native C++ PC games being converted into browser javascript games. (notably, humble bundle ran a "Mozilla Bundle" which had a lot of these converted JS games, including "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! ", "FTL", etc.)

A lot of real-time games servers are created with Node.js along with socket.io. It is easy to get a basic websocket server running with node and socket.io, so you should be able to quickly build a prototype server, and do some performance testing to see if it will be sufficient for your application.