Multiplayer over network and web

[Vic]

Hey guys!

Long time 1602 fan here, bigtime multiplayer fan as well. A couple friends and I tried getting a game going last night, one is in the same building as I am and is on the same network/router. Second friend is connecting over the web. I've had games with both of them seperately recently with no problems but getting both to work is a pain.

With me hosting, we can all connect but the guy on the same network as I am cant see the 3rd player move or build. He can see him in the diplomacy menu and can offer/accept trade agreements etc. If the 3rd player tries to host then the guy on my network cant see the game started even though I can join.

I think it has to do with the port forwarding settings. Currently I have ports 2300 and 47... (dont recall off the top of my head what port it is) forwarded to both internal IPs of myself and they guy on my network). I'm thinking that unique ports need to be used here but there is no way I know of to change the ports 1602 will use.

Anyone got this type of setup working before? Any idea if its possible to change the ports one clients game uses? Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks :)

[mamayourpeoplearehungry]

I have tried before but have never succeeded. If you find a way, please post it for others(me).

[Sir Henry]

I have never tried such an arrangement but I have always been curious if it would work.

Surely it does not make sense to forward a port to two hosts - no router will ever do that. I guess if you try to do that, the router will pick one forwarding or it will take the first one in the list. Anyway, I would currently think that port forwarding is only needed for the player hosting the game and that the clients do not need it. Sure it would not do any harm but it prevents a clear statement as to whether or not it is needed. If it is needed then I see no way as you cannot change the ports 1602 uses, as you suspect.

One more thing that came up lately is that forwarding 2300/47624 is not enough, but that the entire range 2300-2400 (TCP and UDP) must be forwarded. This could explain that in your case the game worked for two players but not for the third.

So please try again with the extended port range and with each of the players hosting in turns, and then let us know how it worked.

NB. An alternative in your case would be playing over a VPN. You might want to have a look at Hamachi (http://www.hamachi.cc) for an easy setup.

[Vic]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I will definitely try changing 2300 to the range of 2300-2400 and also turn off forwarding to the networked pc. I will also look into VPN.

Sadly, these days it is more difficult to get all 3 of us with free time at the same time but hopefully I will get the chance in the next week or so. I'll definitely report back anything I find, it just may take a while.

Thanks again :)

[Vic]

Well we got a game running the other day using VPN. Hamachi works very well, thanks for the tip. We didn't have a lot of time so I didn't want to spend too much time on attempting to get the game running with the extended port range. I will try to do this next time we play if we have some more time.

VPN is a very nice option though, I may have a hard time convincing my friends to bother messing around with port ranges now :wink:

[Dobber]

Thanks for letting us know how it worked out! It will be good info for other users!

[mamayourpeoplearehungry]

Oh this sounds like it could be fun. DPT, you and me against my boys. I could finally shut them up about how baddly I play games.

[Vic]

Just to add a little more info...

I ended up disabling the port forwarding to the other pc on my network, I was hosting. I left the port forwarding as is on my pc (2300, not the range up to 2400). I think I will open it up to 2400 next time we play as we seemed to have some stability issues while playing, meaning one of us would get dropped out. This happened a few times and the last time we were not able to recover and had to revert to a much earlier save. Hoping that the wider port range will help with that.

Also of note, we use teamspeak while playing. For some reason the 2nd pc on my network would not connect to the teamspeak server over the VPN but could join using the internal IP of my pc. The outside player connected via the VPN IP.

I can't wait for 1701 now. 1602 is a classic and one of my all time favorites but seeing the trailers and website info on 1701 has me drooling :slobber:

[Dobber]

I can't wait for 1701 now. 1602 is a classic and one of my all time favorites but seeing the trailers and website info on 1701 has me drooling :slobber:

We are all drooling! :slobber: