Baldur's Gate 2 Multiplayer Help

[Atronach]

I am attempting to run Baldur's Gate 2 multiplayer on two vista computers connected by an ethernet cable. I set xp compatability, window mode, and set the form of connection to tcp/ip. However, when the other person I play with attempts to join my game, it always fails. Any assistance is appreciated.

[Winthur]

Trying to play multiplayer BG through Vista, even with Hamachi, is an Epic-level challenge.

[Atronach]

What is "hamachi"?

[Ikialev]

It's a free program that creates a network.

[Atronach]

Where do you find it? Does it truly improve my chances of playing multiplayer successfully?

[SparkMandriller]

I needed to use Hamachi when I tried to mp BG2 a while ago. We were both running XP though. Lagged pretty terribly, but it worked, which was the important thing, I guess.

[Zovc]

It's a free program that creates a network.

Which, will not work, seeing as the computers are directly connected to one another by an ethernet cable and (presumably) NOT connected to the internets.

Hamachi is a Virtual LAN (VLAN, aka Virtual Private Network, VPN) program that simulates a LAN connection through the internet. When you have two computers connected to a router, the router usually assigns computers a Local IP address of 192.168.1.X (X = 2 through 254), to where you can locally address one another by sending stuff to your friends "192.168.1.64" from your "192.168.1.24," for example. (This eliminates the need to directly connect all the local computers to one another, and also prevents you from having to send things all the way to the internet so that a computer right next to you can download what you're sending to them.) Hamachi gives everyone IP addresses in a similar manner, and pretends to be a router to keep things as basic as possible.

That won't help you, I don't think.

A few questions:
Do you know what both computers IPs are? I would assume you do, seeing as you're connecting via TCP/IP, but y'never know.
Do you have a router, not a hub or a switch?
Do you know if Windows' firewall is enabled, if so, do you know if you've added an exception for Baldur's Gate 2?
Would you be willing to assign the computers their own unique, "static" IP to ensure compatibility? (I can walk you through this, but I've never done it in Vista, I skipped Vista and went straight to Windows 7. If you have IM software [preferably AIM], I can support you there.)

I've never tried networking a Baldur's Gate (/2) game, but principles should be the same, for the most part.

[Atronach]

Which, will not work, seeing as the computers are directly connected to one another by an ethernet cable and (presumably) NOT connected to the internets.

Hamachi is a Virtual LAN (VLAN, aka Virtual Private Network, VPN) program that simulates a LAN connection through the internet. When you have two computers connected to a router, the router usually assigns computers a Local IP address of 192.168.1.X (X = 2 through 254), to where you can locally address one another by sending stuff to your friends "192.168.1.64" from your "192.168.1.24," for example. (This eliminates the need to directly connect all the local computers to one another, and also prevents you from having to send things all the way to the internet so that a computer right next to you can download what you're sending to them.) Hamachi gives everyone IP addresses in a similar manner, and pretends to be a router to keep things as basic as possible.



That won't help you, I don't think.

A few questions:
Do you know what both computers IPs are? I would assume you do, seeing as you're connecting via TCP/IP, but y'never know.
Do you have a router, not a hub or a switch?
Do you know if Windows' firewall is enabled, if so, do you know if you've added an exception for Baldur's Gate 2?
Would you be willing to assign the computers their own unique, "static" IP to ensure compatibility? (I can walk you through this, but I've never done it in Vista, I skipped Vista and went straight to Windows 7. If you have IM software [preferably AIM], I can support you there.)

I've never tried networking a Baldur's Gate (/2) game, but principles should be the same, for the most part.

Thank you all for the replies.

1) Yes, I know both IP addresssess.
2) I have a wireless router, internet, and it is on, however the computer sees our ethernet connection as a separate network, so I do not think the router matters.
3) None of the computer's firewalls are in use, Baldur's Gate is not an exception to this.
4) The person I play with and I have IPv4 addressess, so I believe they are static.

[Zovc]

Thank you all for the replies.

1) Yes, I know both IP addresssess.
2) I have a wireless router, internet, and it is on, however the computer sees our ethernet connection as a separate network, so I do not think the router matters.
3) None of the computer's firewalls are in use, Baldur's Gate is not an exception to this.
4) The person I play with and I have IPv4 addressess, so I believe they are static.

So, with that information, here are a few more questions.

Do those IPs have the same subnet masks? (Should look something like 255.255.255.0, 255.255.0.0, or 255.0.0.0) I have had subnet masks not matter when skipping routers, but I have had some problems resolved by using the same subnet mask.

Are your computers connected wirelessly to the router? It is possible that Baldur's Gate is working exclusively off of the wireless network adapter. If your wireless connections are enabled, try disabling your wireless network connections (and restarting Baldur's Gate), then trying to connect again.

Just because you have IPv4 addresses doesn't mean your address are static. Windows 7, at the very least, likes to give itself peculiar IP addresses when set to automatically obtain IPs but without a DHCP server (like a router). Going back to the subnet question, if you addresses are on different subnets, that may be the problem. (To tell if you're on different subnets, compare addresses in the matching "255" sections of your subnet masks.)

Example: 192.168.1.2 (255.255.255.0) is on the same subnet as 192.168.1.4 (255.255.255.0), but not the same subnet as 192.168.1.6 (255.255.0.0, which a machine shouldn't do on its own according to basic IP principles, but a user could define such an address.) Moreover, 67.132.45.68 (255.255.0.0, which is the appropriate mask, I think) is not on the same subnet as any of the above addresses, and 192.168.2.7 (255.255.255.0) is not on the same address as any of the above.

Essentially, 192.168.1.X (255.255.255.0) is all a part of the "192.168.1" subnet... where as 67.132.X.X (255.255.0.0) is all a part of the "67.132" subnet... the 'subnet address' may need to match.

If you're comfortable assigning static IPs, send me a PM and I'll help you do it. There is no guarantee this will fix your problem, but it will help anyone else on to an alternate solution.

Also, have you tried using a 'crossover cable'? This shouldn't matter in modern OSes (I believe it wasn't necessary in XP), but it wouldn't hurt to try it.

(I'm about to pack up my computer and bring it to a friend's house for a LAN party, then I'll probably go eat, but I should be able to return the PM after that.)

[Atronach]

IP masks are both 255.255.0.0; with these masks, our IPs are in the same subnet.

I will get back to you if the first tips do not work.

Thanks for your help.

[Zovc]

Did you get it working?

[Atronach]

Unfortunately, no.

[Shikton]

BG2 multi in Vista = forget it. It's difficult enough to get it working in XP. If you've got your heart set on playing it together, you need to hook up two computers that use Windows 95 or possibly Windows ME or something. :smallannoyed:

[Atronach]

Normally, I would have done this, however I do not have enough Windows XP computers to go around.

[Eddums]

I'm having a similar problem and have yet to solve it. Does anyone know of BG will work Multiplayer in Windows 7? :smallfrown:

[Atronach]

I believe all the new technology, all the differences between the common technology of today, and the technology of- what, early twentieth century? Is perhaps most of the problem. However, I could be wrong, and hopefully, you have better chances of getting Baldur's Gate multiplayer to work than I do.

[Celesyne]

Make sure you have the Tcp/IP and IPX protocols installed, twas giving me a hell of a headache before i figured that out with xp.

[Atronach]

If you are using TCP/IP do you still need IPX?

[Atronach]

Still taking suggestions.

[darkflwrs]

Hey I have had the same issue and was wondering if there was a resolution? We were on two vistas but now one is 7. we used hamachi, i did port forwarding, we tried gamespy also. we are on the same network i am wireless and hes is directly connect to the belkin router. this has not worked so far obviously and i'm not too great at this kind of thing. i was wondering about setting static ips? i saw someone say they could help do that and wanted to know if that offer might extend to us. i want also to see if i can connect to a bg2 game online with someone outside of our network. if anyone has any advice, please let me know. my email is [email protected]

[Triaxx]

Couple of stupid questions. You said connecting to the game always fails. Are you both running the same .exe version? I play with one person who has a bad CD drive and uses a no-cd .exe to play, and we all need the same .exe, but if one isn't quite right, it fails to connect to the others.

Try disabling all the other connections except the one between the computers, and seeing if there's a problem with it. And then make sure you've got the correct addresses.

I've honestly never had a problem playing multiplayer BG2 with XP, so I'm not sure why others have.

[facehead]

Ok so here's my addition to this.

I have a laptop running Windows 7, and a desktop running Windows XP. Baldur's Gate 2 is installed as well as Throne of Bhaal on both machines. I found both of my ip addresses and am able to host and join games of other things (Descent 2, Heretic 2) just fine.

I had this working, The WinXP computer hosted a game, we had 6 characters made and were starting out in Shadows of Amn. I accidentally unplugged my router and my Win7 computer was dropped from the game.

Now even after uninstalling and reinstalling several times and restarting several times and unplugging the router, and changing an ip of one of my computers the game won't work.

I will host a game with one computer and leave the game in the Character Arbitration screen. The other computer will join, it will detect the game and attempt to join.

Then it tells me "Game In Progress" and tells me I can chat in the lobby and says something like "Waiting For Server To Allow Players" or something... the other game is clearly never in progress.

Tonight I am going to find a way to squish my win7 partition so I can fit winXP on a seperate partition and see if that helps... it sounds like my problem is like you darkflwrs, so I hope we can get this working!

[failbear]

Hi guys, I stumbled upon this page right before I got it to work - it may be too late but I thought I'd share what worked for me.

For baldurs gate 2 multiplayer too work on the newer operating systems such as vista and 7, it needs to be in windowed mode. If you set the game too windowed mode it goes to full screen when you start multiplayer. You can press alt+enter to force windowed mode. That's all it took for me to get it to work. If it still doesn't work - follow the other advice given in this thread.

[nhimera]

Thanks to every who posted tips here.

My steps to success are as follows:

On each computer:
1. Buy BG2 from gog.com, download, and install
2. Set compatibility mode on BGMain to Windows XP (Service Pack 3)
3. Run the game and switch to windows mode (alt-enter)
4. Sign up for game ranger: www.gameranger.com

On the host computer:
5. Host a BG2 game on game ranger
6. Wait for my friend to join the game on game ranger
7. Assign characters and start the game
8. Go back to full-screen mode (alt-enter)
9. Winning!

You may not need game ranger unless both computers are in the same network, but it made hosting a multiplayer game so easy that I definitely recommend it!