HawkNL™ (Hawk Network Library)

HawkNL is a free, open source, game oriented network API released under the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). HawkNL (NL) is a fairly low level API, a wrapper over Berkeley/Unix Sockets and Winsock. But NL also provides other features including support for many OSs, groups of sockets, socket statistics, high accuracy timer, CRC functions, macros to read and write data to packets with endian conversion, and support for multiple network transports. NL has been tested on Windows® 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/CE, Linux®, Solaris™, IRIX®, AIX®, BSDs, Mac OS®. There are also the two high level APIs, HawkNLU™ (NLU) and HawkVoice™, which are built on top of NL. It is NLU and HawkVoice™ that are most exciting, since they give developers portable, easy to use alternatives to the Microsoft® DirectPlay® (DPlay) and DirectPlay® Voice APIs.

Update: HawkNL 1.7 beta 1 is on the download page! Version 1.7 brings changes to the source code that will be used as the base for the version 2.0. If you have used the NL threads, then you need to look at the new HawkThreads API in the hawkthreads.h header file. See the change log below for the latest details.

HawkNLU is on hold again waiting for a beta of NL 2.0.

About the name change: The current FAQ has a few details on this matter.

Now you can browse the NL version 1.6 documentation

Here is the current NL change log (18 August 2004): NLchanges.txt

Here is the current FAQ (24 July 2002): faq.txt

Here is the current HawkNL version 1.68 header file showing the low level API (30 December 2003): nl.h

Here is the current HawkNL version 1.68 Delphi header file (30 December 2003): HawkNL.pas

Here is the current NLU change log (29 April 2002): NLUchanges.txt

Here is the current NLU version 0.7 alpha header file showing the high level API (29 April 2002): nlu.h

Here is the current NLU header file showing the internal protocol (29 April 2002): protocol.h

Now, go on over to the HawkNL message board to help shape this new game oriented network API. Or at least email me.