Newbie's Guide to Setting Up Multiplayer

[Toroic]

I just wanted to make a quick and dirty guide to help people properly forward their ports so other people can join their games. If people find this helpful, I'll include pictures and add a section on setting up Hamachi. This was designed for someone using windows configuring a wireless router.

Table of Contents

• Step 1: Accessing a Wireless Router
  
• Step 2: Finding your IPv4 Address and Forwarding a Port
  
• Step 3: Connecting to your server

Step 1: Accessing a Wireless Router

This is by and large the most difficult step, and will likely require some google-fu.

If you type "(router brand) (router model) IP address" into google, it should supply you with an IP address. For Linksys, it's 192.168.1.1

Whatever the address is for you, you'll want to type it into the address bar at the top of your browser.

It'll prompt you to enter a username and password. If you know this, great. If not, either talk to whoever installed the router, or google the default username and password. Many people don't change them from the default.

This will leave you looking at your router's options. Look for anything that says "Gaming" or "Port Forwarding", as the specific section you are looking for will vary by model. Once you've found the correct section, move to step 2.

Step 2: Finding your IPv4 Address and Forwarding a Port

Starbound's multiplayer utilizes port 21025, so you'll want to enter that into the appropiate location, and that port will be forewarded to the IP address of the wireless router (which will be identical to the IP address with an additional 2 digits that you need to figure out.

Go to start and run, and type "cmd" (no quotes). This will pull up the command prompt. If you've never used the command prompt before, know it's a very powerful tool that can ruin your PC if used improperly, or if you get PC advice from bad sources.

Once in the command prompt, type "ipconfig" (again, no quotes) and hit enter.

NOTE: The command for Mac, Linux, and other UNIX-like systems is "ifconfig" (credit for this tip goes to "A Rather Festive Icehat".

The information you're looking for is a line that says

"IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1xx"

This is the IP address you want the ports to be forwarded to. Your router may fill in everything but the last 3 digits.

So in my case, I have port 21025 forwarded to 192.168.1.1xx. At this point you can hit save settings on your router and begin testing.

NOTE: Some of you will notice that looking up the IP address for your router is unnecessary in step 1 since you're going to open the command prompt for your IPv4 address anyway. This is true, but knowing your make and model is useful for looking up default passwords and possibly where the port forwarding section is. This guide is meant to be maximally simple, not maximally efficient.

Connecting to Your Server

Setting up a basic server in Starbound is accomplished by launching it through the Starbound launcher. You should recognize our old friend the command prompt feeding infomation as the server loads and will also list useful information such as when people connect and their character names.

To connect to your own server, type in the IP "127.0.0.1". This is the default "connect to yourself" IP address.

To find the IP that you need to supply your friends, go to google and search "my IP", which will show your public address. That is what your friends need to type in to join your server.

Once they've joined, you'll need to invite them into your party by clicking on the plus sign on your character portrait on the upper left and typing in their character name. You can see this name in the server window, or you can just ask over steam messaging. Once you're both in a party, you can click on your friend's portrait to beam onto their ship.

That's it for setting up basic multiplayer for you and your friends. Feel free to message me any questions or clarifications you may have.

[Steven Brattac]

wtf this is it not automaticaly settin up under win 8.1??

[Toast]

and you would be a gen Y dude, right?

[Toroic]

Toast a écrit :

and you would be a gen Y dude, right?

Yes. Relevance?

[Googledebunker]

Thanks man. Good guide, I was just thinking of looking up how to port forward for this, and here it is. I hope it gets sticky!

[Toroic]

Sir Lagsalot a écrit :

Thanks man. Good guide, I was just thinking of looking up how to port forward for this, and here it is. I hope it gets sticky!

Glad to hear it helped someone!

[icehat]

This tutorial could easily apply to Mac, Linux, and any other UNIX-like system. The UNIX command is ifconfig and operates nearly the same.

[Toroic]

A Rather Festive Icehat ☃❄✸ a écrit :

This tutorial could easily apply to Mac, Linux, and any other UNIX-like system. The UNIX command is ifconfig and operates nearly the same.

I'd like to add this in, but are there any other steps required for UNIX-like systems?

[LethalSaw]

whats the difference between setting up your own server and buying one ( i see many people advertising to buy slots on a server?)

[icehat]

Toros a écrit :

A Rather Festive Icehat ☃❄✸ a écrit :

This tutorial could easily apply to Mac, Linux, and any other UNIX-like system. The UNIX command is ifconfig and operates nearly the same.

I'd like to add this in, but are there any other steps required for UNIX-like systems?

I wouldn't think so. ifconfig should be the same throughout most *NIX systems, and if it isn't, you can always do man ifconfig and see the manual page for it.

[Toroic]

A Rather Festive Icehat ☃❄✸ a écrit :

Toros a écrit :

I'd like to add this in, but are there any other steps required for UNIX-like systems?

I wouldn't think so. ifconfig should be the same throughout most *NIX systems, and if it isn't, you can always do man ifconfig and see the manual page for it.

Thanks for the info. Adding it now.

Klicker a écrit :

whats the difference between setting up your own server and buying one ( i see many people advertising to buy slots on a server?)

You can run server software on your computer, but then your computer has to handle the work the server needs to do in addition to you playing it. High end computers don't have a problem, nor do servers with only a few people.

But if you're going to have a lot of people, most people would use a physical server, which is kind of like a computer without a monitor (and a few other things they don't need) and typically have a lot of ram and a solid-state hard drive (which is faster than standard harddrives which use a spinning disk).

When people are selling slots, they're basically letting people buy access to a physical server running the game's server software.

There's a number of companies that have a lot of physical servers that they rent out access to people to do whatever with. Some configure the server to run a game's server software more efficiently.

Does that answer your question?

[Pielord]

You should probably make this a guide, not a discussion.

[Toroic]

Pielord a écrit :

You should probably make this a guide, not a discussion.

You're right.