help for battle for middle-eart

[Wizzkidy]

Hi all

I have been trying to get this working for ages with my m8. He has a miny network with a domain controler. His server has the internet connection on it and it then shares though to his machine.

We where having the exact same issue with BFME as I could see his progress bar going up but he could not see mine. Also time outs when trying to join the room.

The only way around it and I must say WE DID GET IT WORKING. At first he was VPN'ing to me but we had the problrem above. It was like he couldnt see me properly in the lobby.

Anyway I VPN'ed to HIM and made sure I could ping his hostname (which I couldn't) but i could ping his IP address on the LAN.

So I added his IP into my hosts file to resolve to the correct name. Fired up the game using GIT for UDP on the ports needed for BFME and went to the lobby - no time out when i joined his game and then we both saw the progress bars going up!

It worked! we had a good game :)

Doubt this wil help with routers but he has got NAT and we worked around it.

Great program btw - thanks to the creator.

EDIT - this is with the standard version NOT THE BETA
EDIT 2 - I am direct connection to the I-net

[thudo]

Me and my friends are all connected to a Wireless MAN network. It covers the whole city, 250 users online.

We each have a static real ip (not behind nat) , for example one has 10.104.104.6 , other has 10.122.2.5 , other 10.100.76.8 etc.

the only common thing we have is our subnet address. 255.255.255.192

Nice! So a city-wide virtual network - is that basically a few people using a hacked/boosted wireless Access Point/Router to then shuttle their high-speed service to the 250 users within a 10-30km zone? What downstream/upstream is the average? What about loadtime during peak hours? If so, thats the future of a hacked internet where a few people buy a T1 or T3, super-boost their APs, then sell it off for others to connect to it wirelessly. ISPs would HATE that but hell, ya gotta do what ya gotta do to sometimes circumvent the oppressive costs of individual high-speed. 8)

Anyway.. yea.. I'm not sure what you guys can do UNLESS you force a 192.168.1.xxx IP in your OS' TCP/IP but also keep your secondary WAN IPs under the Advanced section in the same area. This is what I was thinking for my colleagues who don't have routers/nats.

Now as for Wizzkidy.. I'd like to get this working WITHOUT the need of a VPN connection as a) its a bugger to setup and b) it usually involves only a 1vs1 connection (multiple users not supported) unless of course one uses WinGate VPN but then we're back to a).

ANyway, you mentioned:

So I added his IP into my hosts file to resolve to the correct name. Fired up the game using GIT for UDP on the ports needed for BFME and went to the lobby - no time out when i joined his game and then we both saw the progress bars going up!

Doubt this wil help with routers but he has got NAT and we worked around it.

The Hosts file.. you mean the one in /WINDOWS? Without telling us your friend's IP, what did you type in the HOSTS file? Further, a Router is usually a NAT so in other words your friend got it to work through his Router/NAT and this is what I AM INTERESTED IN! Did you friend do anything different since he's behind a Router/NAT like I am?!

Btw: you said: "this is with the standard version NOT THE BETA" - do you mean you didn't use the latest beta version of GiT? I should still work with the latest GiT version?! No? I would rather use the latest GiT beta then an older one. Just clarifying. 8)

[Wizzkidy]

Hiya,

Yes this was with the older version the beta and i guess it would work with the new one too (well it should) i could test that of course. will report back

Yes the hosts file in windows i changed. C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc

Open the hosts file with notepad and add in below (make sure you can ping the IP of the machine you need

add this

82.XX.XX.XX <TAB Space> The hostname of the machine your pinging

Save this as a file with no extension

Then when you ping that name it will resolve to the IP.

We then tried the game and it worked. VPN is not hard to setup really. but yes only really for 2 people

The problem being over a internet connection without VPN there is a routing issue somewhere for the person with NAT and i dont know if the options in GIT will support that.

Oh also he had no windows firewall on and forwarded the ports needed though GIT - all the rest.

[thudo]

I take it the Hostname for my bud's machine should be his Computer/network name or his LAN name if he were on my local subnet?

What happens if the VPN is *Not used*? The whole point of Multiplay is to have multiple players.. 2 ain't enough these days.. I need to have up to 8! hehehe.. Thats how we play our local games (DoW, AOM: Titans, Armies of Exigo, etc).. I think trying to get more than 2 people using VPN is bloody cumbersome and requires Network101 where most don't even have that! I'd love to use WindowsXP's VPN but alas even to this day noone knows how to get the bloody WinXP Workstation Pro version to have more than 1 connected! Server is no problem but noone is running that.

Need something more concerete. Fortunately, I have word that EA is doing Router/NAT tweaking for BfmE in their upcoming patches so I hope they fix things. Then again, these are the same dumbnuts who screwed over the Generals/ZH community. :evil:

[AlienHack]

Nice! So a city-wide virtual network - is that basically a few people using a hacked/boosted wireless Access Point/Router to then shuttle their high-speed service to the 250 users within a 10-30km zone? What downstream/upstream is the average? What about loadtime during peak hours? If so, thats the future of a hacked internet where a few people buy a T1 or T3, super-boost their APs, then sell it off for others to connect to it wirelessly. ISPs would HATE that but hell, ya gotta do what ya gotta do to sometimes circumvent the oppressive costs of individual high-speed. 8)

Its not through a main BOOSTED AP, its through dozens (38 at this time and going up) of scatered wifi APs which are connected to each other like a chain or multichain sometimes. Clients log to the AP that is nearest to them or best suits them. Thats why each hive-AP has its own ip range and they bridge between them. The best of all, ITS FREE, you just buy the wifi hardware needed to connect.

In conclusion, if we put an extra adress like 192.168.0.xx (where exactly should we put it?) we should be able to play although we are in diferent ip ranges?

Also, without GIT we cant see each other in the network game menu, but with GIT enabled one of us sees the other, but times out while connecting... ? does that show anything?

[thudo]

So how fast (upload/dowload), on average, is that Virtual Wireless Network when connected to all those people? Cost per month? Thats the wave of the future instead of these single account connections.

In conclusion, if we put an extra adress like 192.168.0.xx (where exactly should we put it?) we should be able to play although we are in diferent ip ranges?

I'm thinking place it in your WinXP's TCP/IP properties section. Under My Network Places, Local Connection, Properties, TCP/IP.. Add the 192.xxx.xxx.xxx, Subnet, Gateway, and DNS in the main window *but* then click on Advanced and add your normal 10.xxx.xxx.xxx with a default subnet. Done. Try that.

Also, without GIT we cant see each other in the network game menu, but with GIT enabled one of us sees the other, but times out while connecting... ? does that show anything?

Yep.. thats what happens to us too.. we have to try that LAN IP matchup workaround however. Sound darn good EXCEPT the problem what if yer not behind a NAT but direct-connected? Hrrmmm..

[LaggStorm]

Okie.. wait wait.. wait a sec here..

Now.. question is: this probably could work **BUT** what happens when one of those people connecting is NOT behind a Router/NAT? Do we all have to match the direct-connector's external IP (ie. 65.xxx.xxx.xxx)? Less than half of my colleagues are NOT behind routers.. how would they connect your way?

Thudo, We had tried turning off the software firewalls previously, and since we determined that wasnt the problem (VPN + GIT Attempt) we turned it back on, and didnt think about it again. ;) You are right though, thats usually the first thing checked. Anyway, to answer your question, in Nt4-XP, u can add additional IP's to your stack, up to 5 I think. You would go to your network config and properties of TCP-IP and advanced tab. There you could add an additional IP that match's your friends first 3 IP Octects. I dont know if this will work since I dont know how git works exactly, but its worth a shot. Also, concerning direct connects, I was reading some of the earlier posts to this thread and I think ppl who direct connect (outside IP) can play with just GIT. The LAN IP thing may just be for us NAT folks, Im not sure.

Im not trying to be one of those holier than thou jerks that cant understand why a person would want to try a game before they bought it.....but if u and a bunch of friends want to play each other, wait for EA to patch and buy it. ;) Should be 20-30 bucks by then. I think we all know the major reason ppl want to host games for multiple users is because one or all of them dont have retail copy. Like I said, Im not preaching, because from previous experience with EA, I never buy one of their games before I try it, unless its a sports console game or something, because they have to get it right the first time, and cant patch console games ;) Just my two-cents...Im on a moderate budget and would have willingly paid 40-50 beans to play this game online, if I knew it would run well....and like i said, judging from CnC Gens, I knew it wouldnt and wont for a few months.

With that said, good luck, hope u get it working!

[thudo]

Thudo, We had tried turning off the software firewalls previously, and since we determined that wasnt the problem (VPN + GIT Attempt) we turned it back on, and didnt think about it again. You are right though, thats usually the first thing checked. Anyway, to answer your question, in Nt4-XP, u can add additional IP's to your stack, up to 5 I think. You would go to your network config and properties of TCP-IP and advanced tab. There you could add an additional IP that match's your friends first 3 IP Octects. I dont know if this will work since I dont know how git works exactly, but its worth a shot. Also, concerning direct connects, I was reading some of the earlier posts to this thread and I think ppl who direct connect (outside IP) can play with just GIT. The LAN IP thing may just be for us NAT folks, Im not sure.

Yep.. know about adding IPs to the TCP/IP stack (thats how we got War40k: Dawn Of War to work with more than 3+ people when more than one NAT player is involved!).

I gather I could get my bud with the direct-connect to go into his TCP/IP stack and add my LAN IP (192.168.xxx.xxx) but then force-add his WAN IP (65.xxx.xxx.xxx) in there as well. Its worth a try. For us NAT users, it should work easier although note my sig below: I force my LAN IP in WinXP's TCP/IP then, for DoW at least, I add my WAN IP as a secondary IP the same way. And YES we can play BfmE with GiT *if no NATs are involved* but I want to get this working with a NAT.

As for BfmE.. I hate EA.. BADLY! :evil: Those "c*ck-licks" have never EVER been able to do proper netcoding even since the Westwood days + what they did to use in the Generals/ZH demands I recommend noone buy their games but get them "the dubious way". :twisted: Can't stand developers with such shotty records and people just buy into it like lemmings. Plus.. I get a royal personal satisfaction in circumventing things. heheheh. Okay.. I'm a bad boy. 8)

[tarkin]

Can someone please post the basic steps to get this working?

We can't even see each other games in the lobby.

Here's what we have done:

My buddy is in a LAN behind a router. His internal IP address is 10.0.0.3
I'm connected to the internet via DSL/PPPOE. My LAN ip address is 10.0.0.12.
I configured GIT to act as the client (added his external IP address) and all ports. He configured his GIT as the server.

Here is what I get when I click on connection status:

217.85.XXX.XXX:213 (udp) - UP since Wed Jan 05 16:20:48 2005
last packet received from 0.0.0.0
last packet forwarded at Wed Jan 05 16:17:02 2005

on his machine there is just "0.0.0.0:213 Listening..."

As I said I can't see his game in the lobby.

[thudo]

Update:

Well a friend and myself tried to do that LAN IP workaround (where one person behind a Router/NAT uses 192.168.1.100 while the the other person uses 192.168.1.101 - we're also both set for the same subnet in our routers and OS). We followed those steps outlined on Page 7 but gawd damn the thing again DOES NOT SHOW OUR PROGRESS BAR and when it gets to the end it just disconnects! We used our Domain Names to connect to each other in GiT (ie. myname.dyndns.org instead of an IP) so we didn't need to use a HOSTS file. All ports were open as per usual (213, 8088-28088 + DMZ). GiT settings: First three frametypes used, Forward ARP enabled, TCP/UDP IPv4 Protocols checked, Also Match Source Port and Don't Send Routable are checked.

Bloody absurd! We even tried Armies of Exigo (both behind Routers/NATs) to connect to my game and we could not even get that to work with GiT **BUT** it worked with BattleLan! WTF ?!?!? I'm assuming if we can get AoE to work BfmE should as well.

Anything else we overlooked?

[thudo]

Still nothing about this? Still no go when we're behind a Router/NAT. Direct-Connect works, of course, but we have some chaps behind Router/NATs who cannot go DC. BAhhh!! Just don't bloody get it: you can connect to a game and see it being updated but when ya go to launch it.. just disconnects! Grrrrrr! Utterly f*ing stupid netcode on EA's part (YET AGAIN!!).

Anyone try using similar LAN IPs as mentioned a few messages back? We tried it - my LAN IP was 192.168.1.100 and his was 192.168.1.106 and still no go. Any success stories would be nice to hear. 8)

[Ark]

Regarding deleted posts or deleted users:

This forum is not to be used for flames, trolls, scams, advertisements, warez, cracks, etc

Please refrain from posting any new topics regarding any of these subjects.