How do you find DPlay games on the internet? On a LAN you call the enumerate hosts method, but if you connect to the internet and call it, will DPlay search the entire internet looking for games? I assume not, so how do you do this? Also, without having a dedicated server machine as a node in the WWW to host games (ie all hosts are people playing a game from their own machine) can you get decent numbers of players at once and how would you keep track of what games are going on so a clkient could go to the game''s website and see a list of current games? Cheers.

It seems to me you may have answered your own question - you do need a central machine to function as a lobby. Or code your game to log itself into Gamespy and lease some space there.

But I''m not a full guru on the subject, so if there is another answer, my ear is perked!

Waverider: That''s correct.

I could think of two other solutions, however I''m not sure they''re too feasible:
1) you can announce game sessions to a multicast IP, but multicasting is still problematic on the internet
2) you could use a peer-to-peer network; it could even be possible to (ab)use an existing peer-to-peer network, if its protocol is flexible enough. Has anybody actually tried to this?

cu,
Prefect

Return to the Shadows

You could even use an IRC network, eg, Afternet, don''t know what they''d say about it but registering a chat room and having your servers connect to that, etcetc... and have your clients connect to the room also, and query all the games in the room.

You could also use a CGI script where game servers submit their IPs and your game client can connect to the server and issue a HTTP request for the script and get a list of active games. This method would unfortunately require a ''rinsing'' of the IP list if a server dies and is unable to remove itself from the list.

No matter what you do you will need to have some sort of central server SOMEWHERE if you want to be able to find/keep lists of games other than direct communication (ie. telling someone your game IP over icq).
All the suggestions here are workable except...
Prefect suggested using Multicast, but as of the current version of DPlay multicast isn''t supported by it.

Well I have no idea how you''d get a central server up or how clients nwould communicate with it. Or how much it would cost. And I doubt I''m going to be doing that, though nI had some cool ideas for games over the internet. Maybe if I get a game that is good, someone might step in to help with that?

And with the central server thing, would that server be the server through which all games are run? Or could it just give the addresses of the servers that are hosting games. That way anyone with a quick connection could chost a game so you could have potentially many more games while the central server doesn''t need a huge expensive connection.

Thats how most big games do it. For example MOHAA uses Gamespy software so when your looking for a game you just query Gamespy and they dump off a list to you of like 1000 servers. Also same thing with any other quake3 engine you contact a central server and they give you a big list.

As some other people have said, a central server can be something as simple as a webpage with a known address that uses a cgi script or something to update server lists. It doesn''t have to be expensive, or be a dedicated server. And if your game doesn''t have a lot of players (say only 2-4 or so like the average RTS) you don''t even need a central server, players can just find each other over icq, or through irc, email etc. to play games...