Multiplayer?

[LeGounette!]

I have the original game CD. There was a multiplayer . There will be a multiplayer soon?

[Grester]

UIG hasn't pronounced on this matter yet.

[Mansen]

I imagine they will eventually re-implement Multiplayer through Steamworks. But soon? Probably not.

[BobFish]

Originally posted by Mansen:

I imagine they will eventually re-implement Multiplayer through Steamworks. But soon? Probably not.

That would be pretty great if they did

[doclazarus]

Рельно, где мультиплеер. Что за идиотизм...

[PuerNoctis]

The multiplayer code and it's resources are is still in there. I changed what the "Options" button does and redirected it to the "Multiplayer" menu. The result is this: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/433823127626981708/C4E7C203CDFE2C91FF9B77D441FFE4493FD213D1/

I can also create a new LAN game and the Windows Firewall complains the first time you do this, so the networking code seems to come up also. I didn't have the chance to test it any further though, maybe it crashes as soon as someone joins, but I may grab a friend the next couple of days for testing.

This all doesn't mean that it will work in the end, please keep that in mind. The devs disabled this feature for a reason (one might assume), so even if it's possible to create and join LAN games via Hamachi etc, it still might not work properly or even at all. We just have to wait until the devs patch it in hopefully...

For all the techies out there: The callbacks behind each menu button are hard coded in ig2_Addon.exe, so this has nothing to do with the .uif files flying about. During startup, all the addresses of the callback functions are put into some sort of LUT or just function pointers one after another. The actual icon for the "Multiplayer" menu has just been removed. In the current version, the mov instruction for this for the the options menu is at offset 0x00129230 (C7 05 0C 3A 79 00 40 93 52 00). The bold and underlined part is the address to the actual callback function. This can be replaced with the address of the "Multiplayer" menu (which is still in place), which is D0 92 52 00.

Needless to say, the "Options" menu will not work as intended after that ;)

[PuerNoctis]

Little followup:
- Internet Game: Complains about GameSpy not being installed (as expected)
- LAN Game: Complains about requiring at least one additional human player (as expected, just need my "tester" to spare some time to try it out with me ;) )
- Skirmish: Works

[Mansen]

Puer to the rescue it seems - It's good to hear they haven't yanked out the code entirely.

[PuerNoctis]

I do not attempt to bring multiplayer back into the game again myself, please don't be mistaken. This is just a work of curiosity. But I hope that after showing that there is still almost anything available from the code-side, and with some feedback from the community, there may be a chance that they do a proper re-implementation of at least the LAN mode so that we can play it with Hamachi or Tunngle. Worst case scenario: They rip out the last remnants of the game mode so that we cannot do these little tricks I tried...

[Mansen]

Oh no - I wasn't implying that either. It was just good to hear that they hadn't removed the multiplayer code entirely (yet). It means there's more hope than if they had already pulled the code out entirely.

[PuerNoctis]

No worries, I might have sounded a little harsher than I meant to :)

But another little followup: I tested if a friend is able to join and whether we can start a new game. Yes it works. We could start a new LAN game using Hamachi and he was able to see me building some roads and stuff. But yet again, we didn't have time to do a thorough testing after that. After seeing these results I probably will write a Multiplayer Patcher, where you can enable multiplayer capabilities for yourselves until the devs (hopefully) will patch it in.

Good night y'all.

[Grester]

Originally posted by PuerNoctis:

For all the techies out there

I'm an IT student I still consider that a bit too techy for me :P Hex editing and memory manipulation is a bit too deep even for someone that knows about IT more than an average person.

[Grester]

Originally posted by PuerNoctis:

But another little followup: I tested if a friend is able to join and whether we can start a new game. Yes it works. We could start a new LAN game using Hamachi and he was able to see me building some roads and stuff. But yet again, we didn't have time to do a thorough testing after that. After seeing these results I probably will write a Multiplayer Patcher, where you can enable multiplayer capabilities for yourselves until the devs (hopefully) will patch it in.

Cool, they likely just hid the multiplayer not necessarily removed it so it should work entirely, just not sure how UIG will react :P

[jm764]

Originally posted by PuerNoctis:

No worries, I might have sounded a little harsher than I meant to :)

But another little followup: I tested if a friend is able to join and whether we can start a new game. Yes it works. We could start a new LAN game using Hamachi and he was able to see me building some roads and stuff. But yet again, we didn't have time to do a thorough testing after that. After seeing these results I probably will write a Multiplayer Patcher, where you can enable multiplayer capabilities for yourselves until the devs (hopefully) will patch it in.

Good night y'all.

It's been almost 6 years since you mentioned this, but I was curious if you ever made that Multiplayer patched for this game as I've come across a group reviving old 90s-early 2000s multiplayer games and I figured I'd see if I can get this newer steam version working like the original CD/DVD versions do.

If not, then do you any tips for a "advanced noob" like me, manually patching this in, so I can make a tutorial about it?

[Mansen]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/271360/discussions/0/364042262886421054/

Maybe look in a thread literally claiming to have a working multiplayer feature, instead of necroposting in this one? Food for thought.

[jm764]

Originally posted by Mansen:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/271360/discussions/0/364042262886421054/

Maybe look in a thread literally claiming to have a working multiplayer feature, instead of necroposting in this one? Food for thought.

Well I just fired up the game again and realized that this latest version has the menu patched back in (Idk why I didn't run the game before asking) ^_^; so nevermind the question though that other thread is usefull if someone has the older steam version of this game still.