I must use winsock or directplay for my games ?

If you want it to be portable then you MUST use Winsock. Otherwise just close your eyes and pick one.

Ben

IcarusIndie.com

[The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]

The eternal question...

Use winsock, why should you rely on directplay, why should you restrict yourself to TCP only? Why should you drop all possibiliies of porting your network code without a total rewriting and redesign?

Winsock might seem harder to understand, but, dont you want to learn? Isn''t that what you''ve chosen programming for?

I played around with both and went with winsock. I didn''t like how direct play abstracted everything. It seemed you had to have a ridiculous amount of setup code before you could even send one packet.

Both have rediculous amounts of setup code unless you use a Winsock class like mine which takes one line of code.

The difference is that once DPlay is initialized there''s nothing left to do. You have guarenteed packets, async, ect while in Winsock you''ll spend the next several months trying to get those things working.

If you don''t care about portability and want quick dev time, use DPlay. Otherwise use Winsock.

If you use DPlay. Eventually learn Winsock. I used DPlay first and now am switching to Winsock for another project just because. I''m not biased towards either. Both have benefits and weaknesses.

Ben

IcarusIndie.com

[The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]

I have addressed this age old issue in the FAQ, plz check there or search the archives, this thread has started many many many times in the past.


LostLogic
www.lostlogic.com
Author, Multiplayer Game Programming