Why is there no easy way to play Multiplayer?

[MunchieDog]

Every where I look, I have to download third-party programs and go through a million steps to play with friends. I don't see why this isn't a priority. Am I missing something here because everyone I ask says they don't play multiplayer because it's extremely tedious and difficult to get working properly.

[nasKo]

If people think they *need* a third party program, they mostly mean Hamachi and that is only because they either can't port forward because they do not know how or are under circumstances that do not allow them to (no access to the router administration, ISP not allowing it, etc).

All you need is the server, which can be installed by SteamCMD or via the Tools list in your Steam library (click LIBRARY in the Steam client and then Tools, find "Project Zomboid Dedicated Server").

Why isn't this a priority

Different developers on the team work on different aspects. The fact that stuff in the game changes and other stuff does not does not mean that the stuff that didn't change is not being worked on.
We've brought in peeps from General Arcade, the people who made the Steam integration for us (so we could focus on the solo/main game) and the plan is to have them help us streamline the server creation process as well as other MP goodies while we work on other things.

This enables us to have an important and much demanded area of the game worked on without compromising on our single player focus on the game.

[Misterchicken]

Its not difficult all you need to do is learn to portforward and the rest is easy

[R.J MacReady]

You don't need third-party programs. Just access your router, type a few things and there you have it. Consult the guides.

[Death]

Originally posted by R.J MacReady:

You don't need third-party programs. Just access your router, type a few things and there you have it. Consult the guides.

This is not necessarily the case. I've run a server previously and know how to port forward and have done everything the guide says to get a public steam server up and it's still not working. Now the only thing I can figure is that now that I'm using windows 10 it's blocking something and I have no idea what. I've turned off the firewall and windows defender and any other security feature I could find to see if that helped. Still nothing. Now the offline port checkers I've used have been able to find the ports and tell me they're open, but any of the online port checkers can't find them. So I'm totally at a loss myself. I think the ability to host a game from in-game would be great and for all I know it could come some time down the road. It just sucks when you're trying to set up a server for your friends to play on and there's apparently no way around it.

[Soto]

Originally posted by Death:

Originally posted by R.J MacReady:

You don't need third-party programs. Just access your router, type a few things and there you have it. Consult the guides.

This is not necessarily the case. I've run a server previously and know how to port forward and have done everything the guide says to get a public steam server up and it's still not working. Now the only thing I can figure is that now that I'm using windows 10 it's blocking something and I have no idea what. I've turned off the firewall and windows defender and any other security feature I could find to see if that helped. Still nothing. Now the offline port checkers I've used have been able to find the ports and tell me they're open, but any of the online port checkers can't find them. So I'm totally at a loss myself. I think the ability to host a game from in-game would be great and for all I know it could come some time down the road. It just sucks when you're trying to set up a server for your friends to play on and there's apparently no way around it.

P2P based multiplayer is bad.

[nasKo]

Originally posted by Death:

I think the ability to host a game from in-game would be great and for all I know it could come some time down the road. It just sucks when you're trying to set up a server for your friends to play on and there's apparently no way around it.

Being able to create a server from within the game doesn't help with the ports though. For that, we need to get NAT punchthrough working, which is what the aforementioned cool cats from General Arcade will be looking into, among other things

[Death]

Originally posted by nasKo:

Originally posted by Death:

I think the ability to host a game from in-game would be great and for all I know it could come some time down the road. It just sucks when you're trying to set up a server for your friends to play on and there's apparently no way around it.

Being able to create a server from within the game doesn't help with the ports though. For that, we need to get NAT punchthrough working, which is what the aforementioned cool cats from General Arcade will be looking into, among other things

That's cool. I'm not really complaining. Just saying that I'm not sure if it's windows 10 blocking something, as I've done this before and I'm positive my ports are forwarded correctly. So I guess I'm saying I don't think my problem is something you guys can fix. It's MS probably sticking in a "feature" that the user has no control over. :)