DirectPlay Address

A DirectPlay address is a data format that DirectPlay uses to pass addressing information between lobby servers, applications, DirectPlay, and service providers. The address consists of a sequence of variable-length data chunks tagged with a GUID, containing all the address information needed by DirectPlay. Examples are the network address of a server, the network address of a player, the network address of a session, or the modem and phone number for a dial-up connection.

You do not need to understand DirectPlay addresses in order to use DirectPlay. You need to learn about DirectPlay addresses only if you want to do one of the following:

• Override the dialog boxes of the standard service provider. You create a DirectPlay address that specifies which service provider to use and contains all the information the service provider needs to establish a connection. Then you initialize the connection with this address.
• 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. This information is then passed to the application when it is launched.

More information is contained in the following topics:

• Overriding Service Provider Dialogs
• DirectPlay Address Data Types
• Examples of Using DirectPlay Addresses