ZDoom Online setup Help

[tinylvis]

Be gentle with an old man. I used to play Doom online (phone line) with a friend years ago and I would like to show my nephew how its done. Unfortunately, I'm lost. I believe we had used Doom95 to connect through modems, but it had options to use IP addreses also (I think...old age I guess). My nephew has dileup internet service while I hane cable through a wireless setup. I would like to use ZDoom 94.cab (sound seems to be the closest to the original) but I have no idea what "Launcher" to use. I appologize if this has been addressed before but I couldn't seem to find an article that pertained to this subject.

[TheDarkArchon]

Try using ZDL

[killingblair]

Or you can use ZDaemon, but beware, it uses a very old version of ZDoom, if you want a newer version, use Skulltag but it lacks the "oldschool" feeling

[Macil]

Why use .94? Use .96, its less buggy.

Anyways, just use doomconnector at doomconnector.com

[tinylvis]

Hay, you guys are great! Thanks for the help...and no pain for the old man either. I did try the 96.cab but the sound didn't sound quite right to me (as in the original). Tell me if I did something wrong. In the mean time I'll fart around (what us old farts do) and see what works best. Thanks again.

[TheDarkArchon]

If it's the music that sounds wrong then go to the console when zdoom starts up and type "opl_enable 1" and press enter. This will replecate the synthesizer used in vanilla. If it sounds wrong still, try using "opl_frequency 49716."

[Zippy]

Why use .94? Use .96, its less buggy.

Not if you're going to play cooperatively. In .96, ZDoom has serious problems keeping track of weapons across maps in coop play.

[tinylvis]

Ok...I'm about to give it a rip here in a few hours but the "ZDL" looks promising. I see another message that 96 isn't good on line. If there's something (original style) better, let me know. Thanks again.

[Zippy]

Version .63a is the version I use to play cooperatively with friends (for games the will go on for more than one map.)

[tinylvis]

OK...here's whats happening. I ended up getting ZDL to do what i need...kinda...I Have a home network setup...guess i shoulda said that before, but I was testing another computer on the networkand I got it to run once through a DMZ setup...ONCE. I forgot that we have the same IP coming in and the DMZ took care of that....ONCE. I haven't tried to hook up to an outside IP as of yet but I'm lost now. I figure I can prolly join a game and get the other partys IP but I'm at a loss for an incoming IP since the router is the main IP and we have seperate ones inside of that. This is embarassing for me as I thought I had a handle on all of this. Any help would be wonderful.

[CodeImp]

If you dont want to mess around with IP's, you really should try Doom Connector. When you are planning to play over LAN as well as over the internet, go to the Configuration dialog and select the right IP address wich is on your LAN side where it says "Internal LAN IP Address". Then Doom Connector will take care you are always using the right IP adresses to connect.

Also please note that if you want to play with people on LAN and on the internet at the same time, and one of you is going to host, it must be the one who is directly connected to the internet (or you want to do some crazy port forwarding).

[A] <----LAN----> <------INTERNET-------> [D] <-----LAN----> [E] <----LAN----> In this example situation, only C or D can host the game if you want everyone to be able to join. In Doom Connector, the room moderator (the one clicking the Launch Game button) will be the one hosting the game.

[tinylvis]

Thank you very much...I'll give it a rip.

[Biff]

So you are on a LAN behind a router...you can host from that machine but you will need to set up your router to forward port 5029 to the hosting machine.

I have never seen zdoom connect between a LAN computer behind a router and another computer on the internet, when the LAN IP address is used. The client on the internet always has to connect to the host's WAN (internet) ip address. Even if you set up a DMZ to the LAN host, the client should have to connect to the WAN ip. So, if it works as CodeImp says, which I've never seen, there is something else I don't know.

I am also unaware that Doom Connector will let you have full control of the command line arguments. Maybe it does, and if you ever want to get a three-way game going be sure to include the argument -netmode 1. If you don't, zdoom will use the standard peer-to-peer network mode that requires every machine in the game to communicate with each other machine. -netmode 1 allows the host to handle more of the functions, both for connection negotiation and for in-game data flow. It would be needed for, say, a host on LAN who has port 5029 forwarded to him, or a DMZ for him, and for two clients, one on that LAN and one on the internet. It would never work peer-to-peer because the internet client can see at most one of the LAN computers, not both.

For the record, I never start zdoom games any other way than from the command line or from a shortcut where I can enter the neded arguments by hand like this:

Host:
zdoom -host 2 -iwad doom2.wad -file tntblood.wad -skill 4 -deathmatch

Client:
zdoom -join (host's IP) -iwad doom2.wad -file tntblood.wad -skill 4 -deathmatch

I think that some of the arguments in the client's command line are not needed, such as the skill and game mode (deathmatch) because they are fully controlled by the host. When in doubt, though, make sure the command lines are exactly the same and there is less chance of a consistency failure.

[tinylvis]

Excellent! Nice explanation. That would help explain a lot of my problems. I'm trying to avoid using a 3rd party go-between if at all possible. Old fart pureist that I am.

[Zippy]

For the record, I never start zdoom games any other way than from the command line or from a shortcut where I can enter the neded arguments by hand like this:

Host:
zdoom -host 2 -iwad doom2.wad -file tntblood.wad -skill 4 -deathmatch

Client:
zdoom -join (host's IP) -iwad doom2.wad -file tntblood.wad -skill 4 -deathmatch

I think that some of the arguments in the client's command line are not needed, such as the skill and game mode (deathmatch) because they are fully controlled by the host. When in doubt, though, make sure the command lines are exactly the same and there is less chance of a consistency failure.

I'm the same way. I play with three other people (that's 4 total), and it's usually just me setting up a commandline and ending it with -host 4 while everyone else -join's to my IP. The connection and the game go really well, considering the distances. My roommate and I are on a LAN, and the other two people are about 300 miles away in two other states. In fact, they themselves are about 100 miles apart from each other. We've only had a few problems getting the connection going in the past, but now as long we follow a certain order it never seems to fail. Specfically, I start the game, and then once ZDoom is running and waiting for connections, the other two far away people go one at a time, and then once they are both connected, my roommate on the LAN connects to finish up and then the game starts. For whatever reason, if my roommate didn't connect last, there would occasionally be problems where ZDoom just wouldn't seem to recognize more connections.