HyperKat Support and Tester Forum

Mars Challenger V1.0 => Mars Colony:Challenger => Topic started by: Hyper on May 23, 2010, 10:55:10 AM

Title: Port Forwarding and dedicated servers
Post by: Hyper on May 23, 2010, 10:55:10 AM
This seems to be a big issue to others so lets gather the information in this thread to help people that dont understand it.

To run a dedicated server, create a batch file named game.bat or what ever you want then enter this text:

Frontier -dedicated -mission levels/ares.mis -password goFish -admin BlueJay -port 28000 -log 6

The goFish is a password and BlueJay is the server name, change to anything you want 10 characters or less

The game will run in a console, give your IP address and password to others and they should be able to log in if you set your ports correctly.

To shutdown the server from the console just type KillServer();   and it will shut off and save everything.


In a typical home networking setup, internet access is through a DSL or cable modem. The modem may be connected to a router, which is then connected to the networked computers by Ethernet or WiFi. The router is the device that the Internet sees; it holds the public IP address. The computers behind the router, on the other hand, are invisible to the Internet as they hold a local IP address each. Port forwarding is necessary in the router because computers will send information directed to the public IP address and the router needs to know where to send that information.[4]

Port forwarding is commonly done on Unix computers where port numbers numbered below 1024 can only be accessed by software running as the root user. Running as root can be a security risk, so some people use port forwarding to redirect incoming traffic from a low numbered port to software listening on a higher port. For example, a web server may be listening on a port such as 8080 for traffic redirected from the restricted port 80. A port may be forwarded for use by either the TCP protocol, the UDP protocol, or both.

Here is how a Linksys works (picture below):
Open a browser and go to 192.168.1.1 this will be your router if you have one. Type in the login and password (usually admin admin till you change it) and you should see the screen below:
Your computer on the internet may have some address like 255.122.34.212 but behind the router or firewall that IP address gets changed to something like 192.168.1.100 so this internal IP address needs to have one of it's ports "forwarded" or exposed to the outside world so you can receive game data from other computers wanting to talk to that port (28000).
This game uses ports 28000 to 28002 both tcp and udp. Once you set the ports and start the game it "listens" to this port for any incomming network data. People who "join" will join the servers IP address and send information to port 28000 on the server. Game messages or network data is sent and received from this port so you can play as a client on the given server.



Here is a link to the port forwarding wizzard. I have not tried this but I hear it works.
http://download.cnet.com/Port-Forwarding-Wizard/3000-2085_4-10827828.html

Other links:
http://www.simpleportforwarding.com/
http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/port-forwarding.html
http://portforward.com/