This is a proposal for a Google Summer of Code Project.
Improve Wine's DirectPlay implementation so that it can at least run a simple demo app, and ideally end up enabling network play for a free game demo. A list of such demos is available here http://wiki.winehq.org/DirectPlayGames
Alexander N. Sørnes
On 4/15/06, "Alexander N. Sørnes" alex@thehandofagony.com wrote:
This is a proposal for a Google Summer of Code Project.
Improve Wine's DirectPlay implementation so that it can at least run a simple demo app, and ideally end up enabling network play for a free game demo. A list of such demos is available here http://wiki.winehq.org/DirectPlayGames
Do you mean this is a proposal for you to work on, or just throwing it out there as a suggestion?
-- James Hawkins
On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:03, Alexander N. Sørnes wrote:
This is a proposal for a Google Summer of Code Project.
Improve Wine's DirectPlay implementation so that it can at least run a simple demo app, and ideally end up enabling network play for a free game demo. A list of such demos is available here http://wiki.winehq.org/DirectPlayGames
Always wanted to see that implemented, but there's the issue of the DirectPlay protocol itself, which AFAIK is undocumented.
Or do we have a solution for that?
On 17/04/06, Adam Luchjenbroers Adam@luchjenbroers.com wrote:
Or do we have a solution for that?
Ethereal? :-)
Am Montag, 17. April 2006 16:18 schrieb Adam Luchjenbroers:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:03, Alexander N. Sørnes wrote:
This is a proposal for a Google Summer of Code Project.
Improve Wine's DirectPlay implementation so that it can at least run a simple demo app, and ideally end up enabling network play for a free game demo. A list of such demos is available here http://wiki.winehq.org/DirectPlayGames
Always wanted to see that implemented, but there's the issue of the DirectPlay protocol itself, which AFAIK is undocumented.
Or do we have a solution for that?
"Wine provider for DirectPlay"? For the start, we don't have to be compatible with the Microsoft protocol. If we can get a Wine-Wine protocol, this would work too. If that can then be compiled for windows too, we can provide a simple installer to allow Windows to communicate with us :)
On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, Stefan Dösinger wrote: [...]
Always wanted to see that implemented, but there's the issue of the DirectPlay protocol itself, which AFAIK is undocumented.
For the start, we don't have to be compatible with the Microsoft protocol. If we can get a Wine-Wine protocol, this would work too.
It seems like this would prevent you from connecting to games hosted by commercial companies (e.g. Microsoft) as these are unlikely to install the Wine DirectPlay library.
Or is DirectPlay never used in this way? Even so I think that when Wine implements network protocols (DirectPlay, DCOM) it should really be wire-compatible because requiring the other side to use our protocol is impractical it many cases.
On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, Adam Luchjenbroers wrote:
On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 06:56, H. Verbeet wrote:
Or do we have a solution for that?
Ethereal? :-)
True. but how does that sit with respect to reverse engineering? Any potential legal issues?
Presumably not since this is essentially how Samba is being developped.
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 13:46, Francois Gouget wrote:
It seems like this would prevent you from connecting to games hosted by commercial companies (e.g. Microsoft) as these are unlikely to install the Wine DirectPlay library.
Or is DirectPlay never used in this way? Even so I think that when Wine implements network protocols (DirectPlay, DCOM) it should really be wire-compatible because requiring the other side to use our protocol is impractical it many cases.
With the way DirectPlay works, we could provide our own provider and a compatible provider if we so wanted (at least, to the extent of my knowledge).
True. but how does that sit with respect to reverse engineering? Any potential legal issues?
Presumably not since this is essentially how Samba is being developped
Good point, do they adhere to any rules / procedures to ensure legality?
A few other concerns: * I recently searched MSDN for DirectPlay information - what information is still up there is perforated with dead links. Does anyone know where the good documentation (prefereably for all versions of DirectPlay are). * I took a brief look at dplay.c, at the moment it contains implementations for DirectPlay 2,3 and 4 (all in the one file) - to this we'll need to add 5,6 and 8. Is it worth re-organising this code to make the result (with the new interfaces) less cluttered? Perhaps a dplay[2-5,8].c, with common code in dplay.c?
On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Adam Luchjenbroers wrote: [...]
With the way DirectPlay works, we could provide our own provider and a compatible provider if we so wanted (at least, to the extent of my knowledge).
IMHO we should saves ourselves some work and only do the compatible provider since it will be needed anyway.
True. but how does that sit with respect to reverse engineering? Any potential legal issues?
Presumably not since this is essentially how Samba is being developped
Good point, do they adhere to any rules / procedures to ensure legality?
I think the following articles are a pretty nice description of how they work:
* How Samba was written by Andrew Tridgell http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/misc/french_cafe.txt
* Myths About Samba by Andrew Tridgell http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050205010415933
On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:47, Francois Gouget wrote:
On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Adam Luchjenbroers wrote: [...]
With the way DirectPlay works, we could provide our own provider and a compatible provider if we so wanted (at least, to the extent of my knowledge).
IMHO we should saves ourselves some work and only do the compatible provider since it will be needed anyway.
If it's any sizeable amount of work, true - although I'm investigating using an existing LGPL network library to implement a provider.
If it turns out to be a relatively simple task, then we can provide it, partially as an early solution, but the big benefit I see is that we can use it to test the infrastructure and make sure the rest works while we implement the DirectPlay provider.
How Samba was written by Andrew Tridgell http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/misc/french_cafe.txt
Myths About Samba by Andrew Tridgell http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050205010415933
Got them printed out, unfortunately ATM I lack a licensed version of Windows with which to do the sniffing :\
Adam Luchjenbroers skrev:
On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:47, Francois Gouget wrote:
On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Adam Luchjenbroers wrote: [...]
With the way DirectPlay works, we could provide our own provider and a compatible provider if we so wanted (at least, to the extent of my knowledge).
IMHO we should saves ourselves some work and only do the compatible provider since it will be needed anyway.
If it's any sizeable amount of work, true - although I'm investigating using an existing LGPL network library to implement a provider.
If it turns out to be a relatively simple task, then we can provide it, partially as an early solution, but the big benefit I see is that we can use it to test the infrastructure and make sure the rest works while we implement the DirectPlay provider.
How Samba was written by Andrew Tridgell http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/misc/french_cafe.txt
Myths About Samba by Andrew Tridgell http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050205010415933
Got them printed out, unfortunately ATM I lack a licensed version of Windows with which to do the sniffing :\
What Windows version would you be interested in?
What Windows version would you be interested in?
At this point, I should probably mention that while I have a great interest in seeing DirectPlay working, I have relatively little time to work on it. I'm doing my investigations here and there, and if no-one picks up on this I'll probably work on it with what small amount of time I have free.
So I'm touched by the offer, but you'd be better off offering that to someone who is more commited to the project. If however, you still want to offer me a valid Windows license, pretty much anything from 98 onwards should be fine (except NT4, and preferably not ME).
Adam Luchjenbroers skrev:
What Windows version would you be interested in?
At this point, I should probably mention that while I have a great interest in seeing DirectPlay working, I have relatively little time to work on it. I'm doing my investigations here and there, and if no-one picks up on this I'll probably work on it with what small amount of time I have free.
So I'm touched by the offer, but you'd be better off offering that to someone who is more commited to the project. If however, you still want to offer me a valid Windows license, pretty much anything from 98 onwards should be fine (except NT4, and preferably not ME).
Well, it is not actually that expensive. I'll buy a factory-sealed OEM version on eBay, accompanied by a piece of hardware, making it legal. It will probably be Windows XP Professional. If anyone else comes along, I could probably find something for them, too. :) Send me your full name and address if you are interested.
-
"Alexander N. Sørnes" -
Adam Luchjenbroers -
Francois Gouget -
H. Verbeet -
James Hawkins -
Stefan Dösinger