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muhackl

Player

Reputation: 0

Registered: 2018-01-08

Posts: 1

BF 1942 local multiplayer

Hi dear team-simple community,
wanting to celebrate nostalgia, I bought Battlefield 1942 Antology recently on CD-ROM.
Battlefield 1942, Secret Weapons and Road to Rome.
I got it working on my PC (Win10 64 Bit) by using the patches for 1.6.19, 1.61 b and GameSpy patch 1.61.
Internet multiplayer servers are showing up well. I can connect and play.

But nostalgia wants me to play with friends in a local network. So I set up 3 further Win10 machines with the set of CD-ROMs.
But when I start a local network game on one of them, the others won't find it - it does not show up in the local server list.

So I tried the dedicated server 1.6.19. But even then the server does not show up - on none of the machines - even on the one I started it.
So I tried to set up a internet server via dedicated server 1.6.19. I opened the TCP port 28900 and the UDP ports 14567, 14690, 23000 in my router (FritzBox 7390) to the machine the server is running on.
The server does not show up in the list automatically, but when I add it via IP address, it shows up.

But I can't connect. The error message tells me something like "connection to server failed".
After that procedure, on just one of the four PCs the server is also found in the local server list when starting a local server. But I also cannot connect.

I explicitly told the firewall on all PCs to allow everything regarding the Battlefield application. Even deactivated the firewall to test it. Even connected the PCs via LAN cable to the router. Nothing helped.
I did not install Punkbuster btw.

What else do you need to know to be able to help me probably?
I would really appreciate it if you could help me party with my friends like 2002.

Many thanks and best regards
Muhackl

Trench

Member

Reputation: +129

Registered: 2014-05-05

Posts: 221

Re: BF 1942 local multiplayer

I would try to resolve the local LAN issue first, since although running an actual Internet-visible server should also be possible, it's just added layers of complication that aren't necessary for local LAN play.

Did you end up seeing a prompt from the Windows Firewall (or whomever your third-party firewall on Windows might be) when you tried to start the local non-dedicated LAN game server?  I don't think BF1942.EXE installation requires or creates a firewall rule by default, so Windows probably would have prompted to ask "do you want to allow this program to accept connections" when the game wanted to open listening ports for the game server.  Since the display is in DirectX mode at the time, this prompt can actually end up appearing "behind the game", and isn't visible until you exit the game later.

Go into the Windows 10 "Network & Internet settings", select "Windows Firewall", then "Allow an app through the firewall", then "Change Settings" to enable adding more items to the list shown, then "Allow another app...", then browse to your "C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\BF1942.EXE" game program.  Before hitting "Add", use the "Network Types" button to select both "Public" and "Private" networks.  Then use "Add" to save the new program to the list, and then OK your way out to save the change.

This should only be necessary on the machine that is running as the non-dedicated game server.  The other game machines (the ones expected to find the local non-dedicated server already running on this LAN) should already work even without an explicit rule.

-Trench