DirectPlay and those annoying pop-up windows

[ltdunlap]

I need to know how to get DirectPlay 7 to search for a session over a TCP/IP connection without getting that pop-up box where the user can just press enter. I am writing full-screen appplications and that pop-up box is unacceptable. I have tried creating a DPAddress using the CreateINetAddress method with an empty address and a universal broadcast (255.255.255.255) address. but they don't work. Any ideas?

[PsychoMark]

I searched for that thing for a long time too, and I did find it eventually, allowing my fullscreen game to display a list of sessions manually...

I'm at work right now, but when I get home I'll search for it...

[ice & fire]

Please man, i need that too! Please post, if you find it!

[PsychoMark]

*is happy*

yay! I just found it again! The biggest game I ever made, fullscreen DirectX with DirectPlay and textboxes and listboxes completely in DirectDraw and compressed bitmaps and a lot of more cool stuff which I've been creating in a period of two months, but I never got beyond the menu (selecting/creating sessions and chatting to other session members, completely with line-breaking and scrolling)

*is still happy*



*thinks*.... nah, I will not give away the complete source, but let's see if I can find the DirectPlay part....


I guess I never found out how to enumerate the connections without the dialog, although I did however find what I needed: TCP/IP only connections without the dialog...

Public Sub InitDPTCPConnection(IP As String)
    On Local Error GoTo Error:
    If ErrSource <> "" Then Exit Sub
    
    ' Initialize DirectPlay TCP/IP connection
    Set mDPAddress = mDPLobby.CreateINetAddress(IP, 0)
    mDP.InitializeConnection mDPAddress
    Exit Sub
    
Error:
    ErrSource = "DX::InitDPTCPConnection"
    ErrDesc = Err.Description
    ErrNum = Err.Number
End Sub

Hope that helps a bit, if you need more code just let me know...

[PsychoMark]

Ah, I see you already got that far

Anyways, after some research I found it: the function is called with an empty string to host a session, and is either called with the IP to connect to or an empty string when DirectPlay should search when joining a session...

[ice & fire]

Um, äh.... It doesn´t want to take the IP. It want a DirectPlay8Adress Object... Thats bad...

What can I do?

[PsychoMark]

How about the two lines directly under the comment line in the source I posted above? That converts an IP to a DirectPlayAddress (my sample uses DirectX 7, but I think it should work on DX8 too)

[ice & fire]

Well, it isn´t really CreateConnection...


Look:

If Not (moDPP Is Nothing) Then
            mlEnumAsync = moDPP.EnumHosts(Desc, Nothing, moDPA, INFINITE, 0, INFINITE, DPNENUMHOSTS_OKTOQUERYFORADDRESSING, ByVal 0&, 0)
        ElseIf Not (moDPC Is Nothing) Then
            mlEnumAsync = moDPC.EnumHosts(Desc, Nothing, moDPA, INFINITE, 0, INFINITE, DPNENUMHOSTS_OKTOQUERYFORADDRESSING, ByVal 0&, 0)
        End If

DPNENUMHOSTS_OKTOQUERYFORADDRESSING creates the Box.
The NOTHING (after Desc) is the DirectPlay8AdressObject....


I need to Assign an IP to my DirectPlay8AdressObject


But how?

[ice & fire]

Besides, it has no CreateINetAddress() Function. Only a Build from URL, that takes no IP as Parameter, but a directplay string...

[PsychoMark]

In that case: I don't have a clue.

I've never used DX8 (hated it actually), I haven't used DirectPlay that much (twice, only once without the dialog box) and it's been a year since I even started Visual Basic...

Try http://www.vbexplorer.com/directx4vb/

[ice & fire]

GREAT!

Well, no problem. I WILL find out.
My Game works, it worked without DirectPlay, now with it and that ugly DialogBox will get grilled.

BTW: If you make a game, NEVER start with the menu! Or the Graphics! (I did more than 10 times!)

This time I started the game on paper. How it should work and everything.
Now I have an engine, that actually is a game. It has no Graphics, but you can play it.And the Engine gives the correct Infos for DirectDraw / D3D.
I only need to make my Graphics Engine Ready (About 1/2 of it already works) and my game is completed. (Well, THEN i need to make the menus, they are only ugly msgboxes and text-fields at the moment)

Bye and thanks,
ALex

[PsychoMark]

Well, basically, I already had a game. This was version 2. Version 1 had a settings dialog which was just a normal window, and the game would be fullscreen DirectX

[ltdunlap]

Thanks, PsychoMark, but I already have that part. I can connect to a TCP/IP address that the user enters, but I need to be able to search the local subnet for an unknown address like the dialog box does if you just hit enter.

Also, I, too, hated DX8. Especially the way that Direct3D and DirectDraw became so integrated. Oh well, Microsoft does as it sees fit.

Thanks again for the help.

[PsychoMark]

Well, in my case it would either search the specified IP for sessions, or (if no IP was entered) it would search our LAN.


Since I don't use VB anymore (thus I won't finish it anyways), I've decided I won't mind it becoming opensource, as I think it's a great learning source for fullscreen user input. If anyone's interested, leave a message and I'll upload it to my webserver...


[edit]
If you hate DX8, why do you use it? I still used DX7 after I had installed DX8 on my computer, no problem at all, still supported. I think DX7 is easier, especially with DirectDraw being seperated, so why do it the hard way?
[/edit]

[ltdunlap]

Actually, I do still use DX7. I tried DX8, but because of the problems outlined above, I went back to DX7. I do have DX8.1 installed, but I don't use it to develop, yet. Once I move into 3D, then I think it will probably be great.

Thanks for posting the code. I will check it out.

[ice & fire]

THX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW: Happy new year!

[ice & fire]

Dim Desc As DPN_APPLICATION_DESC
Desc.guidApplication = msGuid
moDPA.AddComponentString DPN_KEY_HOSTNAME, "IP OR HOSTNAME GOES HERE "
If Not (moDPP Is Nothing) Then
mlEnumAsync = moDPP.EnumHosts(Desc, moDPA, moDPA, INFINITE, 0, INFINITE, DPNENUMHOSTS_OKTOQUERYFORADDRESSING, ByVal 0&, 0)
ElseIf Not (moDPC Is Nothing) Then
mlEnumAsync = moDPC.EnumHosts(Desc, moDPA, moDPA, INFINITE, 0, INFINITE, DPNENUMHOSTS_OKTOQUERYFORADDRESSING, ByVal 0&, 0)
End If



This solves the Problem under DX 8.1