A DirectPlay Address is a data format that DirectPlay uses to pass addressing information between lobby servers, applications, DirectPlay, and service providers. The format is flexible enough to hold any number of variable-length data fields that make up a network address. It is not necessary to understand DirectPlay Addresses in order to use DirectPlay. In fact, it is possible to successfully write a DirectPlay application without understanding DirectPlay Addresses at all.
It is only necessary to learn about DirectPlay Addresses if you want to do the following things.
·Override the standard service provider dialog boxes. You need to create a DirectPlay Address that specifies which service provider to use and contains all the information the service provider needs to establish a connection. You then pass the DirectPlay Address to the IDirectPlay3::InitializeConnection method.
·Write a lobby client that will launch an external DirectPlay application. The lobby client needs to create a DirectPlay Address that specifies which service provider to use and contains all the information the service provider needs to establish a connection and automatically connect the client to a session. You need to create a DirectPlay Address of the session to be joined and put it in the DPLCONNECTION structure before calling the IDirectPlayLobby2::RunApplication method.
A DirectPlay Address is a sequence of variable-length data chunks tagged with a GUID that supply all the address information needed by DirectPlay. Examples are the network address of a server, the network address of a player, the email name of a player, or the network address of a session.