| Microsoft DirectX 8.1 (Visual Basic) |
A peer-to-peer game can be launched directly by the user, or lobby-launched by a lobby client application that resides on the user's computer. This documentation will assume that the game is lobbyable, and can communicate with the lobby client.
One of the first steps you should take is to determine whether your game was lobby-launched. To do so, create a DirectPlay8LobbiedApplication object and a DirectPlay8LobbyEvent object. Register the DirectPlay8LobbyEvent object with Microsoft® DirectPlay® by calling DirectPlay8LobbiedApplication.RegisterMessageHandler. The DirectPlay8LobbyEvent object is essentially an event handler that receives notifications directly from the lobbied application object, and indirectly from the lobby client and the lobby. It is not provided by DirectPlay and must be implemented by your application. See the reference documentation for details.
If the application was lobby-launched, DirectPlay will call your DirectPlay8LobbyEvent.Connect method. The dlNotify parameter will contain a DPL_MESSAGE_CONNECT type with connection information. such as address objects for the members of the session.
You should also create a DirectPlay8Peer object and register a DirectPlay8Event notification handler object by calling DirectPlay8Peer.RegisterMessageHandler. These objects will be your primary means of communicating with DirectPlay and the other users in the session. If you want to have multiple players in the session, you must create a separate instance of these objects for each player.