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Dear Community,

I know this is a very common question. I'll give as much information as I can, and hopefully someone will be able to give a straight answer.

I am trying to get my 14 year old son into creating computer games rather than just playing them. FPC Creator is perfect. He created a huge level on his first morning in single person mode.

He has Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit on his PC (4Gb RAM) which is in the home Windows domain (I have a Small Business Server network at home - Unusual I realise). IPv4 and IPv6 are enabled. Windows firewall is on but port UDP2303 is opened for all inbound traffic and each game he compiles is also added to the Windows firewall for inbound connections to be allowed. In readiness for his friends wanting to connect I opened UDP port 2303 on my Netgear firewall which connects to Virgin cable broadband.

My own Windows laptop is Windows 7 x64, but I turned the firewall off for testing the network connection to my son's PC's first hosted game.

No matter what permutations we try, we always can host a game on either PC or laptop, but the other machine which tries to "join" the game, always gets the "waiting to connect" error and the user cannot move but can look around.

I am supposed to be an IT pro, so I am quite comfortable with TCP and UDP ports and general networking, firewall management etc. but this has me stumped.

I note that the IP address for both machines appears on screen as FE80 which is drawn from the IPv6 address. Is it possible that FPS creator is not quite handling the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses correctly. I know that when you make a Windows API call to ask for the network address, you get back an array of addresses not just one address, and the first address might be the IPv6 address not the IPv4 address if IPv6 is enabled.

Anyway, getting network mode working correctly is a regular question, but may be my mix of Windows 7 machines in a domain is a new angle.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Alex

PS I am perosonally looking forward to taking an FPS level into DarkBasic as soon as possible, but I need to get my kids up and running first.

Did you develop the map first in Single Player mode?

If so, then that's the issue. I figured this out and posted a detailed thread on it a while back.

People have a habit of switching to/from SP mode to MP mode due to light placement etc. The very second you do that it corrupts your map format from MP mode.

You 'must' develop the entire map in Multiplayer mode from the very beginning and stay in MP mode.

Also ensure you have the UDP ports forwarded. Job's a good one. If you don't believe whether this works or not, try creating a quick 10 minute map in MP mode only with default light placement, build > run and shazam!

Thanks for the comments.

I have searched most of the threads but maybe I missed yours.

I have three times created a new level from scratch where the FIRST thing I go is switch to multiplayer mode. Then I added one large science lab, joined on four small science labs, added four unarmed characters, five rifles, ten lots of ammo, built game...

Still same issue again. I'll try without prefab parts, just floor and walls.

Maybe a reinstall will do it?

My son is drifting away to MineCraft as I type (end of school day) which is very frustrating for me .....

A

Can you successfully do a telnet between those machines ?
What is the output of "tracert <ip-address of target machine>"
from each machine ?

It's the Prefab parts that will be doing it Alex. They were designed and saved in SP mode.

Try building a single 6x6 room with standard lights from MP, standard characters and build. Works everytime. I tested this theory on 6 computers including 2 laptops with 8 different builds and achieved 100% accuracy on each one. The very second anything from SP is brought into the editor it causes the 'Waiting to connect...' bug.

Just to say that I found time to have another go. I downloaded the latest service pack (19 I think it is now) which came out just after my troubles I think.
I instantly note that the IP address is correctly identified now.
... lo and behold, everything worked first time.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me, and in particular to the people who brought out the fix.

(I just downloaded DarkBASIC. Budding gamer family )