DirectPlay
Author
I am creating a network game i want to uses directplay but have never used it before can anyone give me any good books, example and tutorials.
Quote:Original post by jammy5202
I am creating a network game i want to uses directplay but have never used it before can anyone give me any good books, example and tutorials.
That's because DirectPlay has been abandonded for quite some time now. Try 3rd party networking middleware (I believe Rakknet has a free license for non-commerical users), or just using plain old Winsock. Windows sockets are quite easy and very flexible, so you can use them to fit your application.
I woudl recommend against using DirectPlay because it is not being worked on anymore and was dropped from the DirectX API set a long time ago. This means that tutorials on using it are going to be hard to find. I'm sure there are many other network API's that would suit your problem though. Perhaps someone else can recommend some, as my knowledge of the networking side of things is fairly limited.
Nice...I have had tons of overlaping posts before...but never *exactly* the same time [grin] [grin]
Quote:Original post by circlesoftThat is quite impressive!
Nice...I have had tons of overlaping posts before...but never *exactly* the same time [grin] [grin]
Quote:From the official page:
DirectPlay is deprecated, and Microsoft strongly recommends against using it to develop new applications. Game developers should use Windows Sockets (see Windows Sockets) and the Windows Firewall APIs (see Games and Firewalls).
hth
Jack
Author
i have to use direct play as it is for a university project and one of the requirements is that we use directplay
Quote:Original post by jammy5202I'm sure this problem's come up before. You gotta love universities that enforce the use of technology that's now deprecated and officially advised against [lol]
i have to use direct play as it is for a university project and one of the requirements is that we use directplay
Go find your lecturer/professor and point him to the above webpage and tell him to update the coursework specification [grin]
run a search and work your way through the results. Failing that, find some old books in a library.
Jack
Quote:Original post by jollyjeffersQuote:Original post by jammy5202I'm sure this problem's come up before. You gotta love universities that enforce the use of technology that's now deprecated and officially advised against [lol]
i have to use direct play as it is for a university project and one of the requirements is that we use directplay
Especially since it is just a simple networking wrapper. The student would probably learning much more about networking in general if they just coded their own (ie just use Winsock). In different situations, I guess it is understandable to use older APIs - for instance, a project on 2D game programming, using DirectDraw. However, this is definitely not the case here, because the exact same functionality is offered by even lower-level Windows APIs.
If your professor won't listen, point him/her to this thread. Maybe we can help.
My opinion is that DirectPlay can be a little easier to use in-game, but Winsock is probably 10x easier to set up. Once you get a message system set up for Winsock, though, they're both equally easy.
I have not gotten good results from DirectPlay over the internet, btw. If you're coding a network game it will work fine, but DirectPlay drops connections like bad habits over the internet (in my experience). Winsock, on the other hand, works beautifully.
If you've never done multiplayer-type programming, I would recommend creating a simple console chat application. Once you get that working, you'll be able to implement actual gameplay messages with ease, since it's almost the same exact thing.
Good luck!
I have not gotten good results from DirectPlay over the internet, btw. If you're coding a network game it will work fine, but DirectPlay drops connections like bad habits over the internet (in my experience). Winsock, on the other hand, works beautifully.
If you've never done multiplayer-type programming, I would recommend creating a simple console chat application. Once you get that working, you'll be able to implement actual gameplay messages with ease, since it's almost the same exact thing.
Good luck!
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