Host a game -- broken?

[gaspard.leon]

Well Warband is fun, I own this and the original M&B, and have 2 other friends on Steam that own it...

So we played on some public servers which was excellent fun.

Then went to host a game, first my friend tried it... no results.. game does not show in the list, and there is no way to "Invite" friends to game, "search" for game by name, or "Connect" to game via IP Address/Hostname

How is this "Hosting" supposed to work?

I tried opening some ports shown in other threads on these forums; but since the official word is silent on what actual ports the game uses... we're not sure if they are the correct ports.

I finally tried DMZ mode on the router in a desperate attempt... NO RESULT...

So if we could "Connect by IP address" we could at least play... or if the developer/publisher posted the actual requirements to host a game, that would be excellent... cheers

 

[gaspard.leon]

Ok... further information...

As suggested in another forum I forwarded ports 7240 and 7241 UDP...

I used PFPortChecker and confirmed the ports were forwarded and working.

I then used Process Explorer, followed by AW Ports Traffic Analyser to check if the ports were in fact correct.

Sure enough the mb_warband.exe has UDP ports 7240 and 7241 open.

The 7240 appears to be the server list reporter as it sends a message with the server settings (and some other binary stuff) to an IP address (41.232.45.4 periodically and I can only assume that port 7241 is the main game port...

My friend could not see my game in the list...

MAIN QUESTION: Can we connect directly to an IP address, thus bypassing the whole server browser?

 

[gaspard.leon]

The executable mb_warband.exe also looks up some info from taleworlds.com, but that's the game connecting out so doesn't need forwarding:

First is uses HTTP to "GET" this address:
http://72.55.156.59/handlerservers.ashx?type=ping&keys
And the server returns a (random?) number, which the game then sends to this address:
http://72.55.156.59/handlerservers.ashx?type=confirmping&rand=[random number from first call]
which then returns "1"... lol so not too informative... my guess is it's a server active check?
If the number is incorrect you get a -1 instead...

 

[gaspard.leon]

ok more analysis:

opening:
http://72.55.156.59/handlerservers.ashx?type=list

results in a | (pipe char) separated list of all the server IP addresses... as used by the game browser.

after starting a server, my ip address appears in the list....!!

so why can't people see it or join... must be some weird issue.

 

[gaspard.leon]

OK... one important thing I noticed...

The [Start Search] button actually gets a new list.

The [Refresh] button just updates the Ping times and details for the current list.

So if your friend starts a server probably you will have to click the [Start Search] button for it to show up...

Well all my friends have gone to bed now (it's 1:15am here in New Zealand) so I can't test it now but I will perform more testing tomorrow and post back with the results.

 

[gaspard.leon]

WOW...

ok a lot easier to test... found that you can run 2 instances on the same PC... 

This game is really well programmed!

anyway that's all for now