[Luis Dias]

Not FS2 related, but overall games related.

I have an old copy of unreal tournament that I installed in my current pc and my somewhat middle aged laptop (both running win10), with the thought of letting my kids play it out in multiplayer.

The pc is connected to the router by an ethernet cable. The laptop by wifi, but it's the same network. They can easily ping each other by their current local ips (192.168.1.x).

Couldn't for the life of me to get it to work. No matter how much I let the firewall permit anything in those executables, they just don't detect each other.


I thought to myself, "that's weird. Probably because the game's somewhat old and the netcode is retarded? Whatever."

But now I installed OpenRA with the purpose of letting them learn a Dune 2000 mod and C&C. Same problem! No matter how much I fiddle with everything, I can't get the games to detect each other's computers. It goes exactly the same: I start a multiplayer game in one, I take note of the ip, I try to connect to the game through "direct ip" and "Server is not responding" is always the answer.

The internet can't answer this problem for me. So I ask thee if I'm missing something so basic and stupid that no one even bothered to write on tech forums or the likes.

[Phantom Hoover]

Is the router blocking the ports? That sounds like a possible cause.

[0rph3u5]

Correct me if I am wrong, but Wireless connections use different/newer versions of protocolls to connect to networks than cable-connections. Older games tend to have problems using those, while the OS can.

I vaguely remember using VPN to get some older games to work via WiFi, but that years ago and I might misrember that (and even if its true I don't remember the particulars)

[Luis Dias]

Is the router blocking the ports? That sounds like a possible cause.

Apparently yes, it was. Having gone through finding exactly how I'd tell it to open the particular ports.... everything seems to behave the same. No success , and I had hoped this might have been it.

To be specific, I created a rule to open the port in tcp and another rule in udp.

Meanwhile, netstat -a doesn't list the particular port right now, dunno why. For a moment, it had, but to no effect as well.

Even if I use an open port, it doesn't seem to work as well.

[General Battuta]

Is Hamachi still a thing? Make a fake LAN over internet.

[MP-Ryan]

A few things:

1. Is your router possibly assigning IPv6 addresses internally?  Seems unlikely as you posted IPv4 addresses, but something to check.

2.  Plug the laptop into an ethernet cable connected to the router and see if it can connect then; that'll rule out any Wifi AP shenanigans.

3.  Is your home setup the standard Internet -> Modem -> Personal Router -> All computers/devices, or do you have any sort of other crazy configurations going on (e.g., is the desktop plugged straight into the modem/hub while the laptop runs through the AP, which is wired to the modem separately?)  What make/model of router?  Is this a home router that you've purchased, or one supplied by your ISP?  While you said the computers can ping each other, do other data transfer protocols work between them (e.g. windows filesharing)?

4.  The router really shouldn't be blocking ports on the LAN; usually port forwarding, DMZ, or straight-up unblocking should only need to occur when you're dealing with Internet/WAN traffic.  Do OpenRA and UT operate entirely on the LAN, or do they perform any external matchmaking functions?  I can't remember.

[Luis Dias]

Battuta:

I've downloaded recently gruntmods dune2000, albeit slightly unaware of its legal standing regarding the ip. It does have the hamachi thing you're talking about. I haven't dwelled enough time in it to figure out how it works. As I've checked, it has some kind of IRC user interface. Haven't been able to connect them either through that, but I still might be able to do it? Dunno.


Ryan:

1. It's definitely assigning IPv4 addresses. All dynamic, every time I try to put them to fixed ip addresses, I lose internet access. And no, I never assign IP addresses within the window that the router has saved for dynamic addresses. (Funilly enough, I can ping google's ip address but I can't ping google.com in that mode, which is, apparently, a DNS issue....)

2. I will definitely try this, but if it solves the problem it's a bugger. I don't have a cable big enough to reach the laptop where it should *be*.

3. I have a "crazy set up", defined by my ISP (ZON), with one device being at the same time the hub, the modem, the tv and the phone link.

I can have file transfer protocols... by which I mean, I have successfully shared windows folders between my pc and laptop.

4. My thoughts exactly. Why should I be bothering with ports blocked by the modem if I'm trying to do a LAN connection? Those games should be able to operate merely by direct ip, and since I give the lan ip (192.168.1.x), they shouldn't even go outward. And they probably don't. But since it's the same device doing both works, it could be that it was blocking both internal and external ports...

[MP-Ryan]

Wait, when you try to assign fixed IPs you can't get Internet access?  OK, there's something very odd going on here.

Describe exactly how your connections are physically/wirelessly connected to each other.  As an example, in my house:

ISP Modem (Bridge Mode)
--Asus Router
----Wired:
------Desktop
----Wireless:
------Laptop
------Tablets
------Phones

What I'm getting at is whether both your computers are connected to the same device (albeit one physically and one wirelessly) or if there's something else between one of them and the common link.  It sounds like you have some kind of bigger weird DHCP problem if manual IP assignment screws up WAN connectivity.  Not saying you need to manually assign IPs - I leave all mine dynamic as well - but that could give us a clue of where the problem originates.

The Ethernet cable is just a temporary test measure.  Sometimes those weird home routers from the ISP actually have bridge mode internally enabled, where IPs are assigned independently to the LAN ports versus the wireless AP - essentially making it a router and a secondary router.  It's a stupid setup, which is why I always recommend that people tell their ISP to set their modem+router to bridge mode and buy a consumer router to control their own network devices (at least for computers/phones/tablet; when it comes to TV/landline/VoIP you usually have to leave it direct-connected to the ISP's device).

Anyway, let me know what your setup looks like and how the wired connection works out.  Travel routers are cheap (you can buy the TPLink nano versions for $30) and you could always set one up temporarily to see if the devices talk to each other properly on their own network.