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Updates

V1.2 (21-11-2001) - Fixed typo in Create_TCP_Connection code snippet
- CoUnIntialize() should be CoUninitialize()
- IID_LPDIRECTPLAYLOBBY2A should be IID_IDirectPlayLobby2A

V1.1 (11-4-2000)

Abstract

Seeing that there are few (if any) tutorials on DirectPlay, and that it is such a pain to learn DirectPlay from the MSDN (like I have), I thought I would alleviate some of the agony by writing this tutorial. Also I have this day off since I'm waiting for the monstrous 100 MB DX 7 SDK download.

If you find any errors, please email me at robin@cyberversion.com

What This Tutorial is About

The tutorial will use Directx 5.0 or the IDirectPlay3 interface. I know DX 7.0 is out but I am still downloading it and I passed with DC 6. Although DC 5.0 is inefficient (every packet has high overhead), it seems the new versions are getting better. Anyway, the idea should mainly be the same.

The demo will be a chat program that I am using for my game. It is not a lobby server (a lobby server is something like Blizzard's BattleNet), just a client/server program. The user is assumed to be familiar with C/C++ and some Win32 programming (Of course, DX too). Some networking concepts would help. No MFC, I hate MFC. Putting another layer on Win32 API bothers me when you can access Win32 functions directly. Also, I will only use TCP/IP. If you want to use IPX, modem, or cable, check out the MSDN. They are roughly equivalent.

This tutorial by no means teaches you everything about DirectPlay. Any networking application is a pain to write, and you should consult the MDSN documentation for more information (mostly where I learnt DirectPlay from).

There is no sample demo exe too as I don't have time to write one out to show you.

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