Direct Play

Just wondering if anybody is actually using the Direct Play functions. Apart from the fact the application seems to lock up while establishing connections, are there any other significant down sides?

Does anybody know how to have a game loop running while direct play is connecting?

Should I just go and get Blitz Play?

Directplay is very slow, if your planning on having more than 2 players then dont use it. Even with 2 players dplay is slow.

The only advantage is the built in support for various types of connection. Lan/Internet.

DirectPlay cons:
-Slow to initialize
-Slow to connect
-No choice of ports (of which several will be used)
-Lack of features. All it does is connect, and send messages.

My horribly biased answer is, yes ;) Even if you don't wish to go all out with the Professional version, (although others will agree this is the best route) BP-Lite can give you a solid foundation to build off of! Check out my sig if you want to find more information :) (or browse the docs!)

I'll back that... buy blitzplay pro.

I'm making a 2 player turnbased game so speed is not really an issue.

Blitzplay lite is missing reliable messages so I would need to write something there.

Im not sure i need the power of blitzplay pro just yet.

Hey Surreal,

Is it possible to host and connect to an mp game without the user having to redirect ports on a router. Some big commercial games just work, but others require port forwarding.

What's the deal with that?

Hakea,

It is possible to connect to a mp game without having to fiddle around with router settings, however hosting a game may have some problems. This is because the router when receiving a packet will not know how to deal with it, unless there has been an initial attempt to communicate with the source beforehand.. (ie if the client sends the first packet, then the router knows that the client is trying to initiate the communication.)

As far as Hosting a game.. this *will* require port forwarding, but frankly this is generally required for nearly every sort of server that you would like to host. It is the job of the router in general to ignore any packets which seem to be coming from 'out of nowhere' (ie from someone the router hasn't put into it's NAT table), so that explains why you would have to tell your router (via port forwarding) what to do with these unrequested packets.

oh, And thanks Kanati :)

Surreal not sure if bplay impliments this but you may want to have a look:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=1230