Managed DirectPlay

[Joe Allan Muharsky]

Is there a status on the future of DirectPlay in the Managed environment?

--
Joe Allan Muharsky
Senior Architect, Fulton & Associates
Game Designer, RealityCheck Studios

[Michel Walsh]

Hi,

Sounds that we would have to relay on what the Framework would supply.
Haven't seen any thing official from Microsoft, except the small note in the
help file, in the topics related to DirectPlay. That leads me to think that
the exact future of DirectPlay, which has more than just socket
functionalities, was, is, not fully determined, yet.

Vanderghast, Access MVP

"Joe Allan Muharsky" <jmuh...@nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:47D05FD5-CE84-41CE...@microsoft.com...

[Phil Frisbie, Jr.]

Michel Walsh wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> Sounds that we would have to relay on what the Framework would supply.
> Haven't seen any thing official from Microsoft, except the small note in the
> help file, in the topics related to DirectPlay. That leads me to think that
> the exact future of DirectPlay, which has more than just socket
> functionalities, was, is, not fully determined, yet.

If you search the archives of this group you will find that DirectPlay is now
depreciated and will not be updated. Microsoft's replacement is the NET
framework or plain sockets. This info from Philip Taylor on August 8, 2004.

I personally think that what sealed DirectPlay's fate is Microsoft's turn around
several years ago about releasing UNIX/Linux server support. Few major games,
especially large client server games, want to be tied to Windows servers. They
want to option of heavy duty UNIX servers or inexpensive Linux based servers.

> Vanderghast, Access MVP

--
Phil Frisbie, Jr.
Hawk Software
http://www.hawksoft.com

[Chris]

Hi...I too have just started looking into the DirectX 9 SDK for managed code
and also wondered about the note on "deprecated DirectPlay". I was under the
impression that DirectPlay had a whole host of feature rich APIs for doing
client server things including gameplay, chat, file xfer, etc....so if they
want us now to use the .net Sockets to do everything, why didn't they just
expect us to use sockets before...I mean to say, that we could have been
doing that anyway before, I was just under the impression that DirectPlay was
a very robust API that made it simpler for game developers to do those kinds
of tasks. We could always have used sockets or even Winsock with VB before...

As you said, if this is really about getting platform agnostic code into
people's programs, then I could see that...with the move towards trying to
become the defacto development framework for many platforms....BUT, doesn't
DirectX have tons of other things that MUST have windows in order to run
anyway, thereby rendering the cross platform networking sections of your game
to be..well...no longer cross platform?

I could very well be totally confused on this, since as I said, I have JUST
downloaded the SDK and started looking into it, but any feedback would be
great.

Thanks,

Chris

[Chuck Walbourn [MSFT]]

> I was under the impression that DirectPlay had a whole host of feature
> rich APIs for doing
> client server things including gameplay, chat, file xfer, etc....

That is not an entirely correct impression. DirectPlay has mechanis

> I mean to say, that we could have been doing that anyway before, I was
> just under the impression
> that DirectPlay was a very robust API that made it simpler for game
> developers to do those
> kinds

--
Chuck Walbourn
SDE, Windows Gaming & Graphics

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Chris]

Is some of your reply missing?

[Chuck Walbourn [MSFT]]

(oops, sorry for the incomplete post. hit the wrong key while editing the
response)

> I was under the impression that DirectPlay had a whole host of feature
> rich APIs for doing
> client server things including gameplay, chat, file xfer, etc....

That is not a correct impression. DirectPlay has mechanisms for dealing with
shared per-player data, game 'lobbying' for match-making, host-migration for
peer-to-peer designs, and message transfer with or without guaranteed
delivery. It doesn't directly deal with chat, file xfer, or gameplay in any
way. The API remains a message-centric system, with some additional 'player
management' structure.

> I mean to say, that we could have been doing that anyway before, I was
> just under the impression that DirectPlay was a very robust API that made
> it simpler

> for game developers to do those kinds

DirectPlay was initially developed to deal with a much more complex
networking environment where "sockets" was not the universal solution. At
the time, game developers had to deal with direct head-to-head modem
connections, IPX, NetBIOS, TCP/IP over modem, as well as the more rare
TCP/IP over network.

Now that TCP/IP is ubiquitous, the "sockets" API is a universal solution.
Some features of DirectPlay are still useful, but the standards of practice
in game networking are evolving due to security concerns as well as the
common-place use of personal firewalls, NATs, and so on. Peer-to-peer
solutions are more difficult to configure, UDP datagram communication is
more difficult to do securely, and future Microsoft networking technologies
will be built upon TCP/IP , not DirectPlay.

[Miguel Chacon]

I think that maybe the core technologies behind DirectPlay
will be part of the network environment in the Longhorn
SDK (Indigo) and part of the XNA structure, but not in the
DirectX SDK, and then used via the .NET Framework. There
will be no updates to DirecPlay anymore is the only thing
that we know today.
Only suppositions...