🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3h8a71$i...@mercury.kingston.ac.uk> John Winterton <jo...@king.ac.uk> writes:

> Has anyone got Descent to play multiplayer across IPX routers.
> The docs imply that it is possible but I have only managed to get
> it to work between machines directly connected on the same segment.

It does not work because the IPX driver is quite rotten and does
not work according to the specs.
When two workstations on different networks, say:
44.0000cc010203
and
55.0000cc030405

try to negotiate a game and you have IPX broadcast flooding enabled
between these networks what happens is that they find each other
but descent's stupid driver sends packets from address
55.0000cc030405 to address 55.0000cc010203
and from address
44.0000cc010203 to address 44.0000cc030405
and of course the routers do not do a thing because both addresses
are local.
It seems that they do not give a heck about the network number.
(I found this out about a month ago and have reported this twice to
 Interplay with no reply this far.)
I was waiting to get an ignorant reply like
"You should only play on the same lan" but no answer was a little surprise.

You should get WC Armada with Proving Grounds addition, their IPX-driver
works over routers but is not too polished either. (sends duplicate
packets on the local network)

Pete
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In article <PETE.95Fe...@silver.sms.fi> pe...@silver.sms.fi (Petri Helenius) writes:
>It seems that they do not give a heck about the network number.
>(I found this out about a month ago and have reported this twice to
> Interplay with no reply this far.)

You probably didn't get a reply since the fact that Descent won't run
across a router is documented in the README.TXT file that comes with
Descent.  I quote from section 3c in README.TXT:

"Shareware Descent requires that network players all be connected to the
 same local network so their packets can be routed directly without
 intermediate processing by routers.  The Registered/Commercial version
 of Descent will support routing through network servers."

So, it shouldn't be surprising that you didn't get an answer; you had your
answer in the documentation, and, due to other more pressing matters to
fix/reply to, your message was probably put on a very low priority for
response.

>Pete

-- 
John Price           | Reality just   | All opinions expressed here are my own.
3D game programmer   | isn't what it  | In no way should they be confused with
Interplay Productions| used to be.    | official Interplay policy or opinions.
---------------------+----------------+----------------------------------------

 
> You probably didn't get a reply since the fact that Descent won't run
> across a router is documented in the README.TXT file that comes with
> Descent.  I quote from section 3c in README.TXT:
> 
> "Shareware Descent requires that network players all be connected to the
>  same local network so their packets can be routed directly without
>  intermediate processing by routers.  The Registered/Commercial version
>  of Descent will support routing through network servers."
> 
> So, it shouldn't be surprising that you didn't get an answer; you had your
> answer in the documentation, and, due to other more pressing matters to
> fix/reply to, your message was probably put on a very low priority for
> response.
>

Actually Pete section 3c in my README.TXT for descent says no such thing.
and I quote -

To get optimum performance from network games, the players should be 
connected on the same local network so their packets can be routed 
directly without intermediate processing by routers.  If players are all 
on the same sub-network, the router and servers will experience almost 
no load due to the network games in progress.

So you can understand our comments. No need to be so quick off the draw.
A different version perhaps. I am running shareware Descent Vs. 1.0
dated 12/15/94.

Yours,  John.