This was originally on loki.games.heroes3, but I’m replying here because
I think that is a better location for this discussion.
Makron Stroggos wrote:
[snip, stuff about DirectPlay and Heroes3, etc]
Which brings up an aside (not necessarily addressed to you, Steve, but
to whomever might be reading that can answer): what are the hurdles of
creating a DirectPlay-interoperable library?
Just a thought, but doesn’t wine (partially) support DirectPlay? Maybe
someone could produce a directplay-interoperable library using wine as a
starting point.
-fjr--
Frank J. Ramsay
fjramsay at erols.com
@Frank_Ramsay
This was originally on loki.games.heroes3, but I’m replying here because
I think that is a better location for this discussion.
Makron Stroggos wrote:
[snip, stuff about DirectPlay and Heroes3, etc]
Which brings up an aside (not necessarily addressed to you, Steve, but
to whomever might be reading that can answer): what are the hurdles of
creating a DirectPlay-interoperable library?
Just a thought, but doesn’t wine (partially) support DirectPlay? Maybe
someone could produce a directplay-interoperable library using wine as a
starting point.
The WorldForge team can do this for you. We have developed a cross
platform, open source, generic game protocol called Atlas. We’ve got
two implementations of the protocol - one in Python and another as a C++
library. We have written a client/server chat system and are currently
coding two simple games as demos of the protocol.
It would not be difficult for us to create an layer atop our C++
implementation of Atlas to make it DirectPlay interoperable. Here are
the tasks we would need to perform:
- Define the DirectPlay object, session management, session descriptors,
network capabilities descriptor, serial link and ipx support
- more indirect connection management
- UDP support
- tapi dialer support for windows, modem support for unix
- Matching callback structure
- DirectPlayLobby objects
If the need is simply to provide DPlay-like support, you may be
uninterested in some of these features, which we could leave out. I
suspect there are others in the community who might be willing to add
those features once Atlas is out there being used for stuff. This could
probably be achieved within 2-3 months if we decided to focus our
efforts on it.
Making Atlas work with existing DirectPlay enabled programs could be
challenging, but certainly doable, especially if only a subset of the
features are required. Judging from the DirectPlay spec’s, the lead
developer of libAtlas2 estimates perhaps 3-6 months if we worked on
nothing else.
If you’re interested, drop me a line and we can set up a meeting - or
just pop by irc.worldforge.org / #coders as there’s almost always one or
two Atlas guru’s hanging out there.On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Frank J. Ramsay wrote:
–
Bryce Harrington
bryce @ neptune.net