Play network games over UDP instead of IPX
Network games are played over UDP. Tiberian Sun reached the other machines on a local network through IPX, which Windows no longer carries, so network play had stopped working entirely; it now uses the same UDP that internet play always used. Games are found by broadcasting on every network the machine is attached to, and each player answering is recorded at the address the answer came from. Internet, skirmish, and campaign play are unaffected.
Every player must reach the others on one of the networks their machine is
attached to, and all of them play over the same port, 1234. A router between two
players normally stops the broadcast that finds a game, and one machine can host
only one game at a time. The -DESTNET option that once reached a network across
a bridge has no counterpart, because it addressed a bridge that only IPX had.
The network options screen is gone, along with the adapter, socket, and
destination network it set. sun.ini no longer reads or writes [Network] Socket, NetCard, or DestNet, and entries left in the file are ignored.
Network messages, save games, and recordings changed shape, so different OpenTS release-cycle versions refuse one another. Development snapshots within one cycle are not promised to interoperate and all players should run the same snapshot.
Migration
- Remove `-SOCKET` and `-DESTNET` from any shortcut. Both options are gone, and `-DESTNET` has no counterpart because it addressed a bridge only IPX had.
- Delete `Socket`, `NetCard` and `DestNet` from the `[Network]` section of `sun.ini`, or leave them to be ignored.
- Check that every player can reach the others on one of the networks their machine is attached to. All players use UDP port 1234, and a router between two of them normally stops the broadcast that finds a game.
Affected entities
Credit: ZivDero, tomsons26