Hi, im having trouble connecting to online freespace games as well as a dedicated server I setup downstairs. I run a 2k server with a couple of workstations coming off it. I installed the game on the server, updated it and did the same on my machine. I ran the dedicated server downstairs and tried to connect to it. couldnt see it at all. I used the servers internal ip as well as the external ip. I forwarded 7080 and 7011 (dont quote me on those numbers!) also tried to force 2302 via the launcher setup panel and also at the command line. both mine and the servers multi.log files show that the game detects my network, on the server it also detects the wan connection however both machines network ips are reported as 0.0.0.0. the wan gets the right address though. Thats with the game set to connect via lan. if i set both to be dialup then nothing happens still. the difference is in the log where it detects the wan ip as the dialup ip but then says there are 0 connections. Tried to connect to FS2NET, i could get in and see a game running but it would intermittadly dissapear from the game list. what did i do wrong, sorry for the long blurb but i tried to cram as much detail in as i can, please help i wanna use my joystick again its been soooo long :¬(

What versions of FS2_Open are you using? I've heard reports that it really can help if they are both the same.

hey, just used the original release version from the 1.20 update. there is a little more to the story and that is that one of my friends was trying to connect later as well via vpn. i'm hoping that getting my local machine to connect might mean he can as well although im not focusing on that part yet! he got all impatient and persuaded me to try a new exe. I just went to hunt down the link and found this one the same site:

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/ ... Installing

there was a guide on that site that looked similar, it was about connecting to fs2net and it had an exe in it to download. the page i just posted goes into alot more detail. i'm going to churn over that for a bit, do you really think a new exe will help? do you connect via lan as well and if so does it report your ip as 0.0.0.0? btw didnt try connecting to my server with the new exe as it seemed to just go straight to fs2net and we didnt think to try it on our dedicated server. i found a list of exes on the site but i didnt have a clue what the differences are, is there a place with good descriptions that you could point me to?

Ironically enough if you look at the edit history you'll notice that I wrote the majority of that guide. It's a little out of date to be honest but I haven't had the time to upgrade it recently.

Although the best place to get new builds is at HLP there's a very nice guide explaining how to get online using Tom's Old Build available here

Tom's Old Build is basically retail FS2 fixed to use FS2NetD. If you want to try using FS2_Open itself go to HLPs recent builds forum and try out something new from there (The builds there are pretty new and may have some bugs). Or you can get FS2_Open 3.6.5 from the main SCP forum (Which is much more stable as long as you don't use it with mv_music or zPack).

Apparently, Kazan is saying don't use Toms build since FS2NetD has changed slightly and Toms build isn't compatible or something...

Really? That's a bit of a bugger cause it means that there is no way to be at all certain of any kind of stability now when playing multiplayer.

oh woe is me, hehe that was really helpfull, I found out loads here and throught he posted links. Got fsopen 3.6.5 and installed it on both my system and the server. i overwrote the core with the 3.6.5 version on the server. i did that on mine as well as a bunch of other vps. the game loads fine and i can connect to the fs2net network and see toms game with 2 people in it. i still cant connect to the server here though. i cant get it to work with the -standalone option when using fsopen. it loads the panel then dies during level loading. i dont have any extra levels installed, just the outathebox ones. i tried connecting to the normal fs2 standalone server downstairs with the fsopen exe on mine and that didnt work either. going to see if i can host a game with fsopen on my machine and see if my friend can connect to that. have a good feeling about that though so its all good here (i hope). thanks for all the help. spot on :¬)