Client/Server Communication

This is a highly technical topic, only of interest to developers.

Technical Details
The client computer (the player's computer) and the server computer (which runs the game) have to talk to each other before a game may be considered "online". Our very first goal was to get two computers talking to each other, and today's client/server communication protocol is very simple - we don't bother to secure a connection, or really to maintain any long-term connection at all. The simplicity got us moving on to more interesting parts of the project, but we'll eventually have to return to this area and build something that's both efficient and secure enough to prevent players from "hacking" other players' accounts or "spying-on" other players.

Tohm is currently using a connectionless protocol with weakly secured authentication and unencrypted non-password content. Because it's temporary, I won't take the time to document any more details.