Communicating with a Lobby Client

Much of the lobbied application's interaction with an associated lobby client is indirect. The application does something that affects the lobby client, Microsoft® DirectPlay® sends an appropriate message, and vice versa. For instance, if the application changes the connection settings, DirectPlay notifies the lobby client, and provides the new settings. However, there are two methods that provide information directly to the lobby client: IDirectPlay8LobbiedApplication::UpdateStatus and IDirectPlay8LobbiedApplication::Send.

You must notify the lobby client when any of the following changes in the game status take place.

• The session is connected.
• The session could not connect.
• The session has been disconnected.
• The session has been terminated.
• The session host has migrated.
• This computer has become the session host.

To notify the lobby client of one of these status changes, call IDirectPlay8LobbiedApplication::UpdateStatus, and set the dwStatus parameter to the appropriate value. The lobby client receives a DPL_MSGID_SESSION_STATUS message to notify it of the status change.

The IDirectPlay8LobbiedApplication::Send method enables the application to send a message directly to the lobby client. DirectPlay passes the data to the lobby client without modification. It is the responsibility of the lobby client to process that data.

The lobby client can also send data directly to the application. The data is passed to the lobby client's message handler with a DPL_MSGID_RECEIVE message. DirectPlay passes the data to the application without modification. The lobby client must process the data.