VB:DX7 DirectPlay Connecting directly to an IP (no dialog)

From GPWiki

When you start using DirectPlay7, you will probably start to wonder how to stop DirectPlay7 from showing the connection box asking for the destination IP to search for sessions.

There is an easy way to stop this box from showing, but it has been quite undocumented in the past, and it still is. A while back someone started a topic on this issue at the GPWiki forum. It took some searching in the old forums to find the solution to the problem (talk about undocumented!).

It comes down that you have to make a lobby object, and initialize the connection with this:

Standard DirectX code (originating from the earlier mentioned topic):

 Public DirectX As New DirectX7 
 Public DPlay As DirectPlay4 
 Public SessionData As DirectPlaySessionData 
 Public EnumSessions As DirectPlayEnumSessions 
 Public Const GUID As String = "{ Session Guid}" 
 Public SessionID As Integer 
 Public PlayerID As Long 

Initializing the connection, preventing the IP dialog box from appearing:

 Dim DPEC As DirectPlayEnumConnections 
 Dim DPA As DirectPlayAddress 
 Dim LBY As DirectPlayLobby3 

 Set DPlay = DirectX.DirectPlayCreate("") 
 Set DPEC = DPlay.GetDPEnumConnections(GUID, &H1) 
 Set DPA = DPEC.GetAddress(4) 

 Set LBY = DirectX.DirectPlayLobbyCreate 

 '//Initialize the connection here using the IP and port that you get from a 
 configuration file, or your own user input dialog:
 Set DPA = LBY.CreateINetAddress("IP address", "Port") 
 Call DPlay.InitializeConnection(DPA) 

That should do it. Now you can continue with the normal stuff:

 Set SessionData = DPlay.CreateSessionData 
 SessionData.SetGuidApplication GUID 
 SessionData.SetSessionPassword ""

Note: The above code assumes everything works. No error handling at all. Please check if objects are non-nothing before proceeding at certain points.