directplay c#

Question

Does anyone knows where to find samples, open source projects or even tutorials that are using DirectPlay in C#, apart from the SDK?

ksmloh · Answer

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ksmloh · Answer

The presentation is over and I would like to thank you all for your support. Special thanks to all those that have provided questions, you will be rewarded soon. For those who wish to know how the presentation goes, come visit my site at: http://sg.geocities.com/ksmloh/battleground

ksmloh · Answer

Come visit at http://sg.geocities.com/ksmloh/battleground The developer will be having a project presentation on the 10 May 2004. This is his Final Year Project presentation to his project examiner and supervisor. HOW CAN YOU HELP? The developer would like to appeal to all the experts (in game playing, making or even a casual web surfer) to come forth with any possible questions that you think an examiner would ask. The questions should be based on the project game/report/website. The game and report are available for review (see side menu->Download), check it out and ask questions that you feel are relevant. Please place your name, your Paypal email address and all the questions in the question book. A very stringent analysis of the questions will be conducted and ANYONE WHO PROVIDES THE 10 QUALITY QUESTIONS WILL GET TINY MONETARY REWARDS VIA PAYPAL. SO DON’T WAIT, ASK NOW! The amount of rewards be based on the number of participation. Don’t expect huge payout because according to the market, an idea is worth $0.008333 :) Apart from the payouts, all the questions will be answered accordingly in the Answer Page. There is no restriction on the number of questions that can be asked but repeated or similar questions will be ignored so please check the Answer Page. It is the finale of this project and the developer would really like to see that it goes well till the end. So please lend a hand, your efforts will be deeply appreciated Come visit at http://sg.geocities.com/ksmloh/battleground

wingcom · Answer

wow, good way, thanks

ksmloh · Answer

True, FindHostResponse event will fire when there is only a host being found. So you should store all the hosts found in the list when the eventhandler is called. So if your Findhost is activated with the sync flag, when FindHost ended, if the host list is empty == there is no host. End story. But if your Findhost is activated with the nowait flag, FindHost will run the background, so you must set a timeout. When timeout, check the host list. If it is empty == there is no host. End story. Hope this solved your problem :P Come visit my website on game development at http://sg.geocities.com/ksmloh/battleground

wingcom · Answer

[quote] If there is no host available, For C#, FindHosts will invoke the FindHostResponse event for every host it finds [/quote] I thought only the FindHostResponse event will fire when there is only a host being found? Please enlight me, thanks

ksmloh · Answer

To anyone who has queries about DirectPlay and C# visit my webpage at: http://sg.geocities.com/ksmloh/battleground or post an entry in my guestbook at http://two.guestbook.de/gb_owner.cgi?gid=763390&prot=vhhnmt "You can set up a peer-to-peer session in two ways: Arrange the session in advance. For example, you can use an online lobby to collect a group of players prior to starting the session. The player selected as host is responsible for calling IDirectPlay8Peer::Host to start the session. The lobby typically provides the host's address to the other players, and they use that address to connect directly to the session. Players usually need not do a host enumeration.... " "If you have started a stand-alone session, a potential player must be able find it before the player can connect. Players who are looking for a stand-alone session call IDirectPlay8Peer::EnumHosts to enumerate the available sessions. They indicate the type of session they are interested in by filling in the guidApplication member of the DPN_APPLICATION_DESC structure. They can also specify the network location they are interested in by adding the appropriate items to the host address object, which is passed to the pdpaddrHost parameter of IDirectPlay8Peer::EnumHosts." (Source: MSDN Home -> MSDN Library Archive -> DirectX 9.0 (C++) -> DirectPlay -> Peer-to-Peer Sessions -> Handling DirectPlay Messaging. [Online] Available: http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/default.asp?url=/archive/en-us/directx9_c/directx/play/using/ dxmessages/ptop_host.asp) So it is obvious that if the peers know the address of the host in advance, there is no need to for enumeration. Here's the mistake people always makes: they failed to explain the term address. Enumeration requests are broadcast throughout the entire network so if you are operating on a LAN, then you might find the host. But if you are hosting a session in the Internet; without knowing the IP address of the host e.g. 127.0.0.1, the peer will never find the host at all even with enumeration (the enumeration requests is broadcasted too far too wide to return to you). Now, if you know the IP only, you will be able to find the hosts to enumerate and find these hosts. On the other hand, if you know both the IP and the exact port number of the session, then you can connect directly without enumeration. C# uses the following to enumerate: m_Peer.FindHosts(AppDesc, // Application description HostAddress, // Host address m_LocalAddress, // Local device address null, // Enumeration data 0, // Enumeration count (using default) 0, // Retry interval (using default) 0, // Timeout (using default) FindHostsFlags.Sync); // Flags If there is no host available, For C#, FindHosts will invoke the FindHostResponse event for every host it finds. So it is up to you to handle that event using: m_Peer.FindHostResponse += new FindHostResponseEventHandler(FindHostResponseHandler); public void FindHostResponseHandler(object sender, FindHostResponseEventArgs args) {} As to what you want to do after detecting or not detecting a host is up to you... You can scream, you can yell "Cannot find host", you can do anything :P Note that for different flags used in FindHosts, the enumeration process can be (1) run in the background (FindHostFlags.Sync) or (2) block until a host is found or timeout (FindHostFlags.NoWait). Look up the DirectX-C#-DirectPlay tutorial for more details...

wingcom · Answer

I have a windows form with 2 buttons, one is the host button, and the other is the connect button. I open up 2 instances of the same application and normally user will click on the host button to let the 1st instance to be a host and then 2nd instance they will click on the connect button to connect to the host. The connect button is using the Peer.FindHosts(in c++ is EnumHosts) method to enumerate for a valid hosts. The problem is, what if the user click on the connect button without a hosts, in c++, at least the EnumHosts will return HRESULT and you will know when error occur and call CancelAsyncOperation method to stop the enum and maybe display an error message to user like "invalid host IP", but in c#, FindHosts method doesn't return anything which makes me dont know when I should call CancelAsyncOperation. Someone please guide me, Thanks

ksmloh · Answer

So sorry, I forgot that not everyone are familiar with chinese. Here is my English translation of the article found in http://www.gameres.com/Articles/Program/Control/lobbyserver.htm The most interesting part about DirectPlay would be the Lobby Server. But what is the lobby? Let's imagine this so-called "lobby" as an actual hotel lobby where people attends for conferences or gatherings. Within the lobby, you can miggle around and find intriguing discussions or sessions,you can also gather a group of interested players and begin a whole new session. Basically, lobby is a virtual environment for gatherings. If those not familiar with DirectX, here's a tip about DirectPlay. A lot of documentation regarding DirectPlay are not found in DirectX 9 SDK. in fact, the majority are only found in VC 6.0, DX SDK 6.0. For those who knows about it, recall the SDK for the Lobby server,initially it creates a session,and within this session it creates four groups,using in another sample program known as "bellhop" , one can surf through the lobby. At the same time, in the SDK there is another lobby provider(lobbysrv.dll),in the client code of bellhop, that is what was communicating with the lobby server. Sadly, after searching throughout the SDK, including the web, there are no article with regards to what is a lobby provider. What our lobby server should have is the abilities to: choose our service provider, create multiple sessions, freely host any session and for convenience sake, use the dpchart program found in the SDK. Next, let us see how we can do that: // please refer to the website for the source code, // I must give credits to the original writer, please visit the web page :p The key lies with CMessageProcessorIn,as an example,the program message can be handled very easily,it may not be a lobby server. What we have here is merely for an example, if you are interested, you should try to make a lobby server according to your conditions. First, you should invoke the LobbyServer in a server,then start up the SDK's DPChat as the client,if you use LobbyServer to create a session,while joining the session with DPChat. If you are running the programs on the same machine, use the IP 127.0.0.1 try opening a few sessions,and live as a boss for fun! How to use the SDK's Bellhop client? Just use LobbyServerDlg.cpp's GUID like Bellhop's one,then from within Bellhop's dialog.cpp IDirectPlayX_EnumConnections(lpDirectPlay4A, &BELLHOP_GUID, DirectPlayEnumConnectionsCallback, &enStruct, DPCONNECTION_DIRECTPLAYLOBBY); change it to IDirectPlayX_EnumConnections(lpDirectPlay4A, &BELLHOP_GUID, DirectPlayEnumConnectionsCallback, &enStruct, 0); that's it. But Bellhop may have errors, please do some checks before trying All files are found in VC6.0,DX SDK6.0

ksmloh · Answer

For those who wants to know a little bit more about the mysterious lobby server, here's a site to look up: http://www.gameres.com/Articles/Program/Control/lobbyserver.htm Come visit my homemade online mulitplayer game using C# and DirectX http://sg.geocities.com/ksmloh/battleground