What's up with my game's networking?
by Quentin Headen · in Torque Game Engine · 08/06/2008 (10:25 pm) · 4 replies
Hello everyone! I am making a racing game, and I test the networking using the garage games server. When I use the Gnome Tech open server monitor for the GG server, it finds my game, but it says timed out. So what I did is, I put a DMZ setting on my router to open all of the ports to my computer. That did the trick, but I want to be able to network it even with that setting off.
I know it is possible because I downloaded the game Think Tanks, and even with the router's DMZ setting off, the game found online sessions to play on and it connected. What's up with my game? What settings do I need to configure to allow it to connect even with a router on the line.
Thanks
P.S. I have a Linksys WRT54G ver. 5 router
I know it is possible because I downloaded the game Think Tanks, and even with the router's DMZ setting off, the game found online sessions to play on and it connected. What's up with my game? What settings do I need to configure to allow it to connect even with a router on the line.
Thanks
P.S. I have a Linksys WRT54G ver. 5 router
About the author
Just your average programmer who tries to finish the projects he starts. :) I am currently focused on creating games with Torque engines. My website is http://phaseshiftsoftware.com
#2
08/07/2008 (9:15 pm)
Well, I know how to open the ports in my router to acomodate for my game, but how can I get it to network without having to configure the router at all like the other games do? 
#3
Any game that doesn't require a game host to configure incoming port forwards will either a) use a central server to relay the information, or b) use a central server to perform a NAT punch through.
A central relay server ranges from just acting as a traffic rerouter, to acting as the actual game server.
NAT punchthrough takes advantage of a quirk in the translation protocol to figure out what the translated return port will be, and have both private comps try to hit each other on those ports.
Basically it's a lot easier to just have any game hosts properly setup port forwards.
08/08/2008 (9:01 am)
Which other games?Any game that doesn't require a game host to configure incoming port forwards will either a) use a central server to relay the information, or b) use a central server to perform a NAT punch through.
A central relay server ranges from just acting as a traffic rerouter, to acting as the actual game server.
NAT punchthrough takes advantage of a quirk in the translation protocol to figure out what the translated return port will be, and have both private comps try to hit each other on those ports.
Basically it's a lot easier to just have any game hosts properly setup port forwards.
#4
Thanks for the help. :)
08/08/2008 (10:59 am)
Yeah. The other games I am talking about are games like Think Tanks, and Orbz. I think those games use a central server though. That is the reason they work without the config. I would like to have my own server like that, but the fast ones are very expensive. I payed $7 for a month for one VPS server, and come to find out it only has a 0.2 GHz processor (according to my calculations that is 200 MHz). When I ran my game on the server in dedicated mode, it ran very slow. So slow in fact that the client would time out because the server wouldn't respond in time. So, I will just stick with the router config right now. Thanks for the help. :)
Torque 3D Owner Matthew Jessick