play by direct player host

Forum for the Naval Campaigns games series
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crucesdave
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Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2023 6:05 pm

play by direct player host

Post by crucesdave »

An internet buddy and myself both bought Midway. However, when we enter IP address neither of us can hook up. Any suggestions?
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Hawk27
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Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2022 4:12 pm

Re: play by direct player host

Post by Hawk27 »

The myriad of networking problems that could be at work are... myriad. IPv6 addresses won't work straight up, IPv4 masked addresses haven't either in my experience even after port forwarding, so a "natural" connection requires that you're two of the lucky few in the world who still have old-style IPv4 addresses. I doubt it.

That leaves virtual LAN. For a long time now Hamachi has been a go-to, but it's awfully laggy when you don't live very close by. I've heard good things about ZeroTier but have yet to try it myself, and there are some others out there. The trick is that you really have to trust both the program and the people who you're connecting with, because this is the equivalent of plugging one PC into the other in the same room, with the added "benefit" of possible wiretappers.

Setup varies, though solutions intended for gaming ought to be relatively light. I also recommend against a paid service unless it comes highly recommended, and/or you know some IT professional who can set it up for you, since chances are it's going to be more involved. Long story short is that it will give you an artificial IP address on a fake local network which you can punch into the prompt instead.
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chris_merchant
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Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:04 am

Re: play by direct player host

Post by chris_merchant »

tailscale is all the rage these days. Fairly easy to setup but still requires some tech knowledge
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rahamy
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Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2022 1:43 pm

Re: play by direct player host

Post by rahamy »

Another option is Hamatchi. Recently tested and proved to be working fine with our games, and free for up to 5 connections.

https://vpn.net/
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John Roddy
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Re: play by direct player host

Post by John Roddy »

The problem is usually your home router presenting its IP address to the Internet instead of your computer's IP address. As mentioned, the way around this is to use a virtual LAN. My friends and I have been using a Hamachi virtual LAN in a hub/spoke configuration with four users for well over a year with success. There are other virtual LAN choices as well.

Whatever virtual LAN you use, for security, never configure the software to allow a remote computer to "wake up" the connection and always terminate not just the connection but also the program itself. Himachi has a nice feature that allows you to run the program at each use without ever installing it on your computer permanently.

Your ability to use virtual LAN connections successfully is affected by the bandwidth, CPU speed, and memory of all the connected computers. Fortunately, the original game engine was developed long ago and so most modern computers have a good chances of have sufficient speed to function. One member of our group has a weak link computer that is almost a decade old with only a 2.2 GHz CPU and a kind of dodgy Internet connection yet we are still able to operate successfully. Keep in mind that the current game engine does not utilize multiple cores significantly, only the basic CPU speed matters.

That said, if one of the Internet connections is running slow on a given day, you can have screen lag if there are lots of clouds or torpedoes in the water, large numbers of ships, or you are trying to run at speeds higher than 1X. You can see trouble coming by pausing the game and comparing the current readings of the game clocks on each machine or just noticing when you get screen lag that is, ships and torpedoes suddenly jump instead of moving smoothly.

If you see screen lag, immediately save the game in case the game crashes and pause for a minute to let the game catch up. If screen lag continues, try reloading the game from saved game file although this will sometimes necessitate reassigning ship commands and I've also seen spent torpedoes get replenished.
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