Beginners guide to DOOM co-op
Alright guys...
Can anyone tell me very simply how to setup a simple co-op game of DOOM 2? All I want to do is have me and one (or maybe more) friend(s) play through the game together over the internet. I've been having some difficulty setting it up. Do I need to run a separate copy of Doomsday on the same machine which acts a server? Or do I just start a new single-player game and type in a command to host the game for others? Or do I need to find a decent dedicated server already out there and then control it with specific commands? How does it all work?
Like I say, what I want to do is simple...I just need step-by-step instructions to setup a simple 2 player game over the internet.
Can anyone tell me very simply how to setup a simple co-op game of DOOM 2? All I want to do is have me and one (or maybe more) friend(s) play through the game together over the internet. I've been having some difficulty setting it up. Do I need to run a separate copy of Doomsday on the same machine which acts a server? Or do I just start a new single-player game and type in a command to host the game for others? Or do I need to find a decent dedicated server already out there and then control it with specific commands? How does it all work?
Like I say, what I want to do is simple...I just need step-by-step instructions to setup a simple 2 player game over the internet.
Comments
(At the moment, the recommended way to play multiplayer games is to connect to the deng team public servers; however, players can't control the game settings on them...)
What you need to do is 1) start a dedicated server on your own machine, 2) configure the server using console variables and/or commands, 3) with the server running, start another instance of Doomsday on your machine and connect it to the local server (e.g., "connect 127.0.0.1"), and 4) have your friend connect to the server via your public IP address.
You must make sure that incoming TCP traffic to the port used by the server is allowed from the internet (default TCP port 13209). If you happen to use NAT of some kind this may involve mapping the port in your router so that it is redirected to the machine running the server.
Hopefully this helps you. I intend to give the multiplayer code another push forward in the coming months when we start preparing for splitting the server code into a separate executable. (Also note that MP/network regressions are possible in the unstable builds as we haven't yet checked for those after all the refactoring.)
I've no problem configuring the router, that's all in the bag. The only points I could do with going over are steps 1 and 2.
How do you launch the dedicated server? I've read somewhere I should be seeing some kind of a console window, is that right? Also how do I specify that it's a DOOM server from the Doomsday launcher? I'm a bit confused.
As for the variables, providing I have a list of them all I'm sure I'll figure them out. Perhaps there is an example configuration file out there somewhere I could copy and adjust?
Thanks once again.