BZ1 and Anet

[eddywright]

Gamespy supports a handful of games, I can't see them adding support for BZ.

One of the big advantages of Gamespy or any modern game server is tying it back to a real identity like your Gamespy ID. So when someone breaks the rules (http://www.gamespyservers.com/rules/), there are real consequences for behaving badly.

I believe the same model could be used with Raknet and could support BZ, BZ2 and other games but its a daunting task...

Eddy

[Dx]

Spock and Harrison both do many things not allowed on the gamespy rules.

Raknet was suppost to be easy to setup and use on games.

[eddywright]

Has anyone successfully compiled Raknet? Might be interesting to build the empty shell and lobby system just for giggles.

[Ultraken]

Regardless of the merits or flaws of Gamespy, it'd be a lot of work since I've never worked with a networking SDK like that before.  I also don't know if BZ1 would qualify for an Indie license since it was a commercially-released game at one point.  It's interesting speculation but it'd be a long shot at best.  (RakNet would have similar issues there as well.)

[eddywright]

Regardless of the merits or flaws of Gamespy, it'd be a lot of work since I've never worked with a networking SDK like that before.  I also don't know if BZ1 would qualify for an Indie license since it was a commercially-released game at one point.  It's interesting speculation but it'd be a long shot at best.  (RakNet would have similar issues there as well.)

Which brings us back full circle, BZ1 did work with Heat Network. There's some sort of interface built into BZ1 to talk to an external lobby, I haven't been able to reverse engineer it so far. It seems to be buried in the anet.dll code (I think that was the one, dx?).  If we can simulate Heat Network, the BZ exe's won't need rewriting.

Eddy

[Avatar]

This is interesting...

Heat.net was an online PC gaming system produced by SegaSoft, Sega's PC game division. Heat.net hosted both Sega-published first- and second-party games, as well as popular third-party games of the era, such as Quake II or Baldur's Gate. Heat.net was based on a licensed version of the MPlayer Internet multiplayer gaming system, which itself later became GameSpy.

So, Heat.net is sortof Gamespy's Grampa???



-Av-

[Red Devil]

How about using Hamachi?  Would that help or not?

[eddywright]

Hmmm, I hadn't given Hamachi much thought. That could be used to make private servers, or depending on the web interface for Hamachi, you could create login IDs to get onto the VPN, which would give you access to the server.

I'll have to look into this a little more.

Eddy

[Ultraken]

I'll plead ignorance to all this...   

[technoid]

What network protocol(s) does BZ1 use over the Internet again?  Is it IPX/SPX or also TCP/IP?   Someone elaborate the whole shmeal. 

[Ultraken]

I'm pretty sure it's TCP/IP.  The Activenet part is for browsing active games, whether waiting or started.

[Dx]

TCP gets you the servers but the rest seems to be udp.
The lan is IPX and TCP/UDP for wudplan.dll.

[Firestorm29]

Hmmm, I hadn't given Hamachi much thought. That could be used to make private servers, or depending on the web interface for Hamachi, you could create login IDs to get onto the VPN, which would give you access to the server.

I'll have to look into this a little more.

Eddy

I've put some consideration into this as well. I'm not exactly sure but I think the log ins work that you send get an IP from the Hamachi servers and the password is the access the net. I'm not sure if you really can implement a true user/password system. I could tinker around with it since I know people that have had experience with it to play touhou games through the net (originally not built to do so.).

The other problem here is you have to access the server by setting it up in the LAN playsetting and I think use the server hamachi IP to get into the net.