Let''s say I want to make a board game, something akin to Monopoly. Turn-based, so no real-time problems here. You should be able to create a game that has 8 players: 1 at the host machine 1 also playing at the host machine (take turns) 2 playing on the same remote machine 1 more playing on a different remote machine 2 computer players How would you design this? I tried doing this for the game I''m currently making, tried to use classes so that the game loop just saw a "player" and got turn info back, but it didn''t work out. Anybody have any experience in this? Is it best to create a server and have every player (including local player) be a client?

Are u using directplay here? If it is, it is quite easy.

Every machine needs a list of players in the game. Only one of them will be the server, which will take care of all the turn token and comp players.

The server can have a player since it''s doesn''t have to know it is the server. The server tells the player it has the turn (via a message) and the player can send a message back to the server when it has finish it''s turn. Upon receiving the "I am done" message, the server just move to the next player in the list and sends another message there.

So the while loop only sits and receives message and acts on the "global variable" that is has the turn (which is set by receving a "You got turn" message from the server.)

The tricky part is when you want to use threads for receving messages.

Oddly enough, I''m much more comfortable with threads & such than I am with DirectPlay (never used it before). I''ll have to take a look at it and see if I can learn the API. Thanks for the tips.

Take a look in the DirectX section at gamedev. I have a article on the basics of DP.

As for threading. Tis more troublesome with window messageboxes rather than DP itself because you need to pause the receiving thread when a messsagebox pops up or the thread would keep receiving data while the program "stops" there.