Help setting up a peer to peer game

[Morety]

A friend and I have started playing an old game we really liked. Panzer General 2. He found a version that may be played on Windows 10. (It came out in 1998 and was dos based.)

The game was set up so that you could play live/online against other people. All they had to do was enter your IP address and if you had a game loaded and ready, they could see it and join in.

While we figured out how to play against each other by email, we still cannot figure out how to play live/online against each other. We've both allowed it through our firewalls. We tried setting up a LAN via LogMeIn but that isn't doing it for us either.

Does anyone have any idea as to how we can set this up?

Thank you for any help.

[Cathulhu]

Don't post links to illegal downloads. That website has no right to offer the game as a download.

Anyway, not a Steam problem.

[Morety]

It's freeware, SSI has long been disolved. Game was from 1996 and I am hoping someone can help me out.

[Cathulhu]

No, it is not freeware.

https://www.gog.com/game/panzer_general_2
The game is still being sold by its current rights owner which would be Ubisoft.

That website is offering an illegal pirated copy of the game.

Again, your issue has nothing to do with Steam and you won't receive any help regarding the usage of an illegally obtained copy of any game.

[Morety]

Ah my apologies. It was freeware, looks like it isn't any more. Link removed.

[Cathulhu]

It never was.

[Morety]

You sure about that? It's been available on abandonware sites for at least 15 years. Not sure when GoG got the rights to it.

[Ettanin]

Originally posted by LoLMorety:

You sure about that? It's been available on abandonware sites for at least 15 years. Not sure when GoG got the rights to it.

Abandonware is illegal by definition of the copyright law. Abandoned games may be abandoned from sales (meaning their original owners didn't care about distribution anymore) but that does not make such downloads legal under the DMCA.

Anyways, if portforwarding doesn't work, make sure you have a dedicated public IPv4 address. Most ISPs, due to address space exhaustion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion ), usually don't offer them for consumer grade connections anymore. You're virtually behind an additional router sharing the public IPv4 address with other ISP subscribers. This is also called CGNAT (Carrier Grade Network Address Translation) or Dual Stack lite (in combination with a dedicated public IPv6 address). Because you cannot configure this public router to suit your needs (would be a bad thing if that was possible...), you are not able to host through such connections.

Some ISPs might offer allocation of a dedicated IPv4 address on demand or for a fee. If that is not an option, look for group VPN services such as Tunngle or Hamachi and use the IPv4 address they allocate to you.

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by LoLMorety:

You sure about that? It's been available on abandonware sites for at least 15 years. Not sure when GoG got the rights to it.

GoG does not own the Panzer General franchise. Ubisoft does.
And yes. Abandonware does not equal legal.

Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Although such software is usually still under copyright, the owner may not be tracking copyright violations.

[...]

In most cases, software classed as abandonware is not in the public domain, as it has never had its original copyright officially revoked and some company or individual may still own rights. While sharing of such software is usually considered copyright infringement, in practice copyright holders rarely enforce their abandonware copyrights for a number of reasons – chiefly among which the software is technologically obsolete and therefore has no commercial value, therefore rendering copyright enforcement a pointless enterprise. By default, this may allow the product to de facto lapse into the public domain to such an extent that enforcement becomes impractical.

Rarely has any abandonware case gone to court, but it is still unlawful to distribute copies of old copyrighted software and games, with or without compensation, in any Berne Convention signatory country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

Simply stop trying to defend pirating the game. First it's freeware, now it's abandonware. Both aren't true.
Even if the latter where true, it would still be illegal.

[Morety]

Hi Ettanin, thank you very much for your detailed response, it was very helpful and gives me something to look into.

Cathulu I paid for this game years ago when it came out. Did my license run out? The game is no longer supported by the company that made it, and varations have been made available online by fans of the game who have taken it upon themselves to upgrade it so that it may still be played on newer versions of windows. I assumed it was considered freeware/abandonware. After reading Ettanin's post I realize how it works and am more than happy to re-pay (I mean my God it's only $15) for the same game if it will work online. I don't want to give them my money again if it doesn't. Perhaps if you were more helpful and took time to help me understand it better (ie see Ettinen's post), this could've ended within two or three posts. But thanks anyways.