What network dependencies are required to run BZII on a LAN?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Somehow settings on my system apparently are preventing me from seeing new games started over the LAN. I have XP on both systems, and have bz2 and bzone in my firewall exceptions list, but I still can't see new games started on the other system on BZII 1.2 games? Are there any services that need to be running in order to get a new game going? Does BZII use DDE, DCOM, DHCP, or net tcp port sharing components all services are configured to run as a local system. MY LAN is a simple ethernet to hub to ethernet setup that connects between the 2 pc's, but I'm running out of things to try. Any tips on what I should do to get my LAN games going again as they did work in the past, but now something is out of whack. Tanks BNG. PS: I did manage to make some headway, but BZII poped a message that the server was full.

[Axeminister]

Windy joins my mpi games through our lan everyday. We both have xp and mine is set up like this: Cable internet goes into my pc which has two network cards, the internet then comes out the second network card to the hub. The hub feeds Windy's pc, my roomates pc and the Xbox. In order for all this to work you must use the network connection wizard, but before you do, turn off all the firewalls and antivirus protection programs. Once the wizard is finished it will ask you to make a floppy for the other pc's. Once you've run the floppy on the other pc you should have a "Network connection" and can set up the other pc to be able to use the main printer. Reboot both pc's then try to make a BZ2 game on your newly setup lan connection.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Maybe my problem is skipping the network disk. They way I did it was to run the network wizard but skip the floppy for the other pc. Thanks for the tip I'll do it via floppy and see if things begin working again. PS: I'm making some air combat DM's so my nephem and i can battle each other other our home lan...BNG.

[mase]

Can you ping the other PC?

You have to open ports 17770-17772 TCP and UPD on the machine that is hosting the game.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Tanks, I'll check the settings and enable any that you list. I have my air dm map ready to go just need to figure out what changed as oddly enough I used to be able to play over my LAN. It also appears that my network card drivers were out of date, but found updated drivers using windows online data base utility. Also, apparently the floppy disks didn't help much. It appears that the XP network thingy is doable w/o disks. BNG, takes a deep breath and submerges again to have another go at it. 

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I managed to get one air dm going for a while over my LAN, but the problems that remained was related to weapons on my models. The guns showed up with blank slots where there should have been chain guns. The rockets, stock isdf salvo's did appear, but my special slot scloak was blank as well.

I did a complete uninstall of BZII 1.2 and FE on both systems to minimize bad asset issues, but now I get bad assets on LAN based mp air dm games on both systems. I can play stock dm maps, so I suspect that the bad assets issues are related to the weapons odf's on each system. For example, on one system the chain guns on one model appear as simply chain gun while on the other system with the same aircraft the weapons slot name appears as chain gun 2. Very odd as both systems have virtually the same mods installed on the system. The only exception is the folder I added under addon with a folder named bng assets which contains my own personal stuff. I compared the 2 folders on each system and one is substantially larger in size then the same folder on the other system.

I also suspect that I may have a bad ethernet cable as my connection to the other system is intermittent; at times it works fine at other times I can't connect to the other system at all. I'm not really sure though. I may just switch to a wireless LAN at some point in the future; perhaps a usb system.

I finally figured out too that I had a bad cd burner which I was trying to use to burn data onto to transfer files from one system to another. I have another cdr that I switched to and was able to burn files again. I plan to replace the bng assets folder from one system to the other to see if that helps to get the weapons to match.

Anyways, I believe the problems that I'm experiencing now may be related to the weapons odf's being read differently by each systems bzone.exe?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I got the issue resolved through a combo of changes to both Windows ICS firewall thingy by disabling it on my lan network card on both systems, and by adjusting settings on my virus scanner Avast to disable protection using it's network shield. I also figure out that I was doing some things wrong in where I stored my custom air dm maps and made corrections on that end too to get rid of the bad asset messages; apparently, placing all of custom models in addon is a bad thing as multiple variants of the same odf usage were conflicting with each other. Moving the custom assets folder from addon to the root directory of Battlezone did the trick and I added my custom models to a new folder under addon/missions/multiplayer/mapfolder; everything seems to work fine now except that standard dm ships are still appearing when a player gets killed; it's a minor bug, but my nephew seems to enjoy playing in standard ships any ways.