I don''t know if I should use DirectPlay or Winsock for the game I''m working on. DirectPlay has a lot of features built in that I might have to code myself if I used Winsock, but I''ve heard Winsock works a lot better than DirectPlay (if done right of course, a professional programmer using DirectPlay can make it go faster than a newbie using Winsock). I''m stuck on which to learn and it''d help to know which one I''m going to use so I can learn it and be able to finish more of my game. I don''t need it to be game specific, just general so that I''ll know which would work better with more games that I make and which would have a point to learning it. Sorry for any major mistakes in what I just wrote, I''ve been asleep for 3 hours, woke up, everything''s still blurry, and I thought I''d ask this before I went back to sleep. If possible, let me know of a couple places to learn which ever one you suggest. Thanks.

I can''t talk about DirectPlay cause I have not worked with it.

Here is why I am learning Winsock.
1) It''s not COM.
2) The tutorial on this site is pretty good. (WinSock 2 For Games)


Thats it. I guess it''s a choice based your on personality.

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I wrote the best video game ever, then I woke up...

I''ve never touched Winsock but I''ve noticed this Forum tends use it more than DPlay.

It took me one day to add DirectPlay support to my DirectX game. I just cut and paste my game around the Simple Connect demo. The oldest backup of my server program is June 30th 2000. About 3 weeks later on the 24th of July I changed the format of the message struct to what it is now. It hasn''t changed since. I cleaned up some of the initialization routines but that just speeds up loading.

Basically it took me 3 weeks to learn how to use it effectivly. Where with Winsock you have all kinds of issues about sending and recieving packets, I don''t. With the demo program I used, once it was added to the game, doing LAN, TCP/IP or dial-up wasn''t even an issue. It was all just there already.

I''m noticing a bit of lag over the net so some tweaking is in order however that''s really a non issue. You''d have to do the same with Winsock.

By using Dplay I''ve spent less time worrying about why something won''t work, cause it''s never not worked, and more time making the game.

There''s a bit of documentation for DPlay. There''s not a whole lot to talk about though. There''s less to DPlay than every other part of DirectX.

Ben