Socket-based vs Unreliable messaging in Google Play Game Services

Question

Is there a performance difference between socket-based messaging and unreliable messaging? Or the difference is just the implementation?

Answer 1

There should be no inherent performance difference between the two, as they are just two mechanisms that give access to the same underlying system. That said, here are a few things to keep in mind with regards to performance:

1. Unreliable messaging requires you to provide a byte[] buffer. So don't fall into the performance pitfall of allocating a new byte buffer every time you want to send an unreliable message, because the garbage collector won't be happy.

2. If you are using C/C++ to write your game, using sockets can be done natively, while sending unreliable messages requires a trip to Java-land via JNI. It's pretty easy to shoot oneself in the foot in the native/Java boundary, especially with regards to performance (your byte arrays might have to copied, for instance).