The applications you design can use DirectPlay's player-management methods to manage the players in a game session. In addition to creating and destroying players, you can enumerate them or retrieve their communication capabilities.
The IDirectPlay::CreatePlayer and IDirectPlay::DestroyPlayer methods create and delete players in a game session. Upon creation, each player is given a friendly name, a formal name, and a DirectPlay player ID. The player ID is used by the game and DirectPlay to route message traffic. The friendly and formal names are not used internally by DirectPlay; instead, you can use them when communicating with the players. The IDirectPlay::GetPlayerName and IDirectPlay::SetPlayerName methods allow your application to work with the friendly and formal names while the game is being played. The IDirectPlay::EnableNewPlayers method enables or disables the addition of new players and can be used to prohibit the creation of new players once a game is in progress.
You can use the IDirectPlay::EnumPlayers method to discover what players are in a current game session and their friendly and formal names. This function is typically called immediately after the IDirectPlay::Open method opens an existing session. The IDirectPlay::GetPlayerCaps method retrieves information about the speed of a player's connection to the session.