...it is related. I'm writing my own networking objects to support client/server networked games. It is being written in Delphi 2005, but FPC compatibility is being kept in mind at all times. It currently uses HawkNL 1.7 as the networking back-end. What inspired this was that DirectPlay is getting axed from DirectX in future versions and I wanted some networking objects that were simple to use. There is also an apparent lack of readily available game-oriented networking objects that supply the functionality that I was wanting.

This is a screenshot of the test application. It contains a client and a server in the one application. In this screenshot, I have started a local 32-player server and a remote 16-player server (remote as in the computer next to me). Selecting the Search button sends a GETSERVERINFO broadcast message over the LAN and waits for responses.



That is all it does at the moment. Note that they are not really a 32-player and 16-player server as such. It is just a server object sitting there responding to GETSERVERINFO messages pretending to be a real server.

Next on the list is to get the client to be able to connect to the server. And yes, I know the ping to my own machine is slower than the ping to the remote machine. I think I have some things to sort out in the ping calculation.