It occurs to me that I wasn’t thinking straight when I wrote the previous entry regarding my reluctance to use .Net 3.5 SP1 in ‘Encounters’ for hybrid networking.

In a clearer state of mind, it occurs to me that because only the Windows version of the game is going to use the WCF networking implementation, that only the Windows version of the game will require the 3.5 SP1 version of the framework as a result.

The Xbox 360 appears to use a version of the Compact Framework 3.5, however it’s worth noting that 3.5 is a binary compatible set of additional assemblies that run in the .Net 2.0 environment.

What this effectively means is that I can use functionality in 3.5 SP1 (specifically the ability to serailize objects that aren’t marked as DataContracts or Seralizable) for the Windows version of the networking stack without contaminating the code of the game and preventing it from running on a 360.

Even better, it means I don’t need to mark-up my data model with any kind of attributes to support network play on Windows and I shouldn’t need to use a dubious set of byte array wrappers for data that can be typesafe, effectively letting me maintain a “purer” game model.

I’ll move my development environment to 3.5 SP1 and test this theory later, but I suspect I can simplify the networking stack on windows without the need for any messy hacks because of SP1.

Sometimes sleeping on a problem really is the answer; I was about to do something pretty stupid.