Battlezone 1

But packed with even more fun!

EDIT: Solved the text in blue, scroll down to the next segment of fun:

So I have used the custom battlezone installer, forwarded the ports 21000 - 22000 (and checked they are opened using a port checker tool). I'm running on vista 64bit, and I have a THOMSON TG585v7 router.

When I go to join a game, I just get the continous "....." that go on for ever, but when I quit the game it says "could not connect". I have windows firewall disabled, and the above ports are properly forwarded, so I don't know what the problem is. I have checked to see if its a Vista issue by trying on my XP laptop, and I still can't connect.

I'd love to be able to play this great game on mulitplayer.

Thanks in advance, and good luck!

EDIT: Solved the problem of "could not connect". If you have multiple network connections (in my case, I have a hamachi connection) it pisses my router/BZ off and won't forward the ports correctly. I disabled the network connection for hamachi (leaving just my wireless connection enabled) and it works, but now I have a new problem:

"Lost connection to game"

I join the lobby, connect, create a player and all that jaz. But now after a few seconds of sitting in the lobby, I loose connection to the game. Sad times Any suggestions?

If I quickly go to "launch game" after joining the lobby, the game fails to load and after a while the game crashes with unhandled exception

I don't think you forwarded ports correctly. Can you explain exactly how you did it?

I went accessed my router (192.168.1.254). I opened the ports 21000 - 22000 (UDP and TCP to be sure), and assigned them to my ip address (I have a static IP address so its not like my router has reassigned me a new IP address or anything). I disabled windows firewall.

Thats it really. I checked the ports were open by using http://portforward.com/help/portcheck.htm

Opened ports isn't the same as forwarded ports. Sounds to me that you forwarded them to an external IP, instead internal. You have to set static internal IP (on the PC you are using for BZ) and forward ports there, like I explained here.

No I'm pretty sure I forwarded the ports. I used this method http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Thomson-Alcatel/SpeedTouch585/Company_of_Heroes.htm

Although the game in the link is company of heroes, I used the same method for battlezone

You are saying you did this?

yep I've done that aswell

If you have working BZ in a single player and if you forwarded ports correctly, then multi player should run fine too. You have all portforwarding info and you are saying you did it right. We should exclude router issues then, unless you want to recheck everything.

Next step is to determine do you have BZ98 installer (fully patched BZ) and does it work in a SP?

P.S. No need to disable Windows Firewall, just add bzone.exe to exceptions (when it asks).

Single player works like a charm, and i used the BZ98 installer from the website. I am convinced that battlezone is using ports that I don't know about, I am 100% positive that I have the ports opened.

Maybe someone knows a way I can log the ports that battlezone uses using some program, so I can make sure it only uses the ports 21000-22000?

To be sure it's the port issue, you should turn router's FW off or/and set DMZ for your PC.

But you are right there, BZ uses ports 21000-22000 in 95% cases. The thing is that Anet assigns them randomly and you can't really tell people to open all ports. I somehow thought that the person having port issues would know on which port is connected, but how to know that without some proggy like Wireshark.

There are 8 people sitting in the lobby ATM. 7 are using ports 21-22k and 1 is using 32776.

Thanks for the link, very helpful. Joined the lobby and used Wineshark to look at all the ports it used, the vast majority of them were in the 21000-22000 range as your said, and then it appears to be random ports (which you also said). So does this mean, we can conclude that the reason I am losing connection to the lobbies, is because of these random ports (meaning the only solution would be to disable my routers firewall)?

This got me thinking, if the random ports are making me disconnect, and lets say for the sake of argument, I completely disable my routers firewall and I still can't connect to games, this would be because of hosts firewall doesn't have open the random firewall ports that Im using? Meaning that I'd never have a gaurenteed chance of ever joining a game in my life?!

At one point I thought that you might be losing connection due having old winets2 (dll which communicates with the game server Anet), but since you have BZ98 installer, you are updated (WinNT dll is in it).

You don't have 3rd party firewall other than windows firewall? And you can make own MP game just fine, but no one can join, right?

Every router is different, some don't require you to do anything, others need port forwarding (21-22k) and then there's yours which doesn't work even then. Only way to be sure that the issue is in ports is to set DMZ and check how that works for you.

I wouldn't say that the issue is in your ISP, I would bet money on that router of yours since there are others who connect with other ports than 21-22k and play BZ just fine. I think the issue is in router's default firewall, which even when it's set to off blocks certain ports. If DMZ fails I suggest you to call your ISP. If even that fails I would buy a new router (or exchange the one you have with a friend).

Yea, my router is pants. I think the whole internet is in agreement that this router is rubbish, but its the one my ISP provides, and since I'm moving out to uni in 4 months I'll just fight with it for now.

I'm in the middle of exam season at the minute, so I'll probally not try and muck around with the DMZ when I get a break from my exams. Thank you very much for your help so far, I'll bump this thread when I try setting up a DMZ (couple of days/week)