TCP/UDP/Directplay

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/TCP/UDP/Directplay

Farflame(Posted 2005) [#1]
I'm playing around with some networking stuff and am wondering what's the difference between these 3 styles of networking? I think I'm right in saying that TCP is slower but more reliable than UDP, but what's the deal with Directplay? How is it better/worse than TCP or UDP?


Matty(Posted 2005) [#2]
UDP is the way to go for real time games but you need some way of handling dropped packets. UDP is also easy to use with BlitzPlayLite. Not sure how to find it though as it is not listed in the toolbox. A person who goes by the name of Surreal wrote it I think.


KuRiX(Posted 2005) [#3]
For BlitzPlay look in www.blitzcoder.com in the left menu.


Farflame(Posted 2005) [#4]
Blitzcoder has closed down, although there's a new site, so I'll try there.

I'm currently using Blitzplay already by the way. I was just wondering how Directplay differed from TCP and UDP.


Gauge(Posted 2005) [#5]
What kind of net stuff are ya working on? I'm working on a mud. I have a little code if you'd like lemme know.

I do not believe their is any advantage to using direcplay at all. The only way this would be any advantage would be if it transferred all data between each client, which it doesn't. All it is a different way, thus all directplay commands can be easily redone with a few lines of code.
If their is some advantage to directplay, please tell me what it is, i'd really like to know if I'm missing something big, but I doubt it.

Udp is faster, but quite a bit more complicated. I suggest starting off with tcp, since their is alot less. I think you could write in tcp, and fairly easily convert to udp if the need existed. But I think that with good coding, tcp could work, but i've never been able to test it.

I did not like blitzplaylite. It seemed more complicated then it should be, and the commands are pretty ugly, never really gave it a shot, but it didn't do what I was looking for.


erbbysam(Posted 2005) [#6]
do not use directplay it's microsofts method of making things suck :D... http://www.blitzcoder.com/blitzplay/downloads.shtml
use blitzplay for everything that is game related... it's easy to use packet-drop-less udp... If you want to do things that don't have to be real time, use tcp... there are a few libs in the code archives here