Greetings!
Firs of all, I don't care much about DirectPlay per se, and am fully aware it's deprecated. However, I am currently looking into it for a quite simple reason: I love the way it's integrated in XP's built-in Windows Messenger 4.7 (the "old" one). Frankly, I greatly dislike Microsoft's move of removing the DirectPlay lobby client feature from new Messengers -- it seems a superb feature, and I currently have several games I installed listed as launchable via DP.
This was to avoid having to respond to "DirectPlay sucks" comments; that is something I am aware of (I generally dislike DirectX). Here comes the actual question.
Do you have any suggestions on how to write a DPlay lobby server (that is, a "game") which would ONLY read the given settings dispatched by Windows Messenger, and then go on about establishing regular Winsock-based TCP/IP connection on its own? Or even better. Is there a way to integrate non-DirectPlay application as launchable via Windows Messenger (such as "Remote Assistance" and "Whiteboard" which are already being listed there)?
Language of interest is C++. Complete examples are welcome.