I am about to program an online poker game in school and would like to have some questions answered before starting. I am pretty new to all this and I don't know much about network programming. What I would like to do is to create a server which handles logins (it keeps track of how much (fake) money each user got etc), and then also deals the cards and keeps track of everything going on. But how should this be done? Sockets, DirectPlay or what is the best way of doing that? The way I've explained also means I have the "play"-code on the server right? Which just sends what happends to the client, which will present everything (the cards being dealt etc) with DirectX (I think I will use that). Any other suggestions? Sorry if my English is bad, just ask and I'll try to explain what I mean better. [edited by - rms on April 5, 2004 10:21:11 PM]

Hmm?

[edited by - rms on April 5, 2004 10:20:55 PM]

Your best bet is to use sockets (WinSock on Windows; regular "socket" on UNIX) for the server and client. Use TCP, because it''s easiest. Use select() to wait for data on the sockets. Read data, process, and write back to the socket. Repeat.

Any of the 1000s of tutorials on TCP/IP client/server socket programming out there will show you how to do this.