Ports: only need to when you're sitting behind a router, I believe. go to your router's site (you can usually accesss it by typing 192.168.0.1 in your browser as the URL) and then see what you can find there about opening/forwarding IP adresses. You'll have to see if the example program needs UPD or TCP protocoll.
how to know the IP: http://www.whatismyip.com/ it says it right there, that is still the fastest way of finding your own IP. You usuually only need to open ports if you're the server, so the other PC won#t need to. So it may be easier to get someone without a router to host and then you can join that game.

If you'd like to see this example of code in ANet, I could do it.
To answer your questions from above:
can anyone set that up? how long would it take? has anyone ever done it?
-I believe I can, yes. No promises though.
-between half a day and half a year. Hard to tell. But I'd say, including testing (with you), about 2 days.
-I have, yes. Not with a simple shooter though, we're working on a space action-shooter game which is a little more complex.

So either tell me to do it and I'll try, taking a short break from my game, or you can wait until dark_samurai has finished ANet demos, I think he's working on them. Of course, his demos won't be shooter specific.
If you want to, you can add me on some account (yahoo, ICQ, msn... whatever you have) so it's easier to communicate when we test the thing.

I have seen several multiplayer shooter demos here.
(just search trough the multiplayer forum)
Made myself two shooters before, one with native GS multiplayer, and one with GSTNet.

Its still a paint to set up to get it work right.

But I dont see much motivation working on multiplayer shooters.
You put a lot of work into it, and (apart from some beta-tests)
noone is playing it, as there simply is a lack of
people online to play with.

Thats the crux with multiplayer:
its a lot of work and testing, and (unless you make a really
impressive game with a player fanbase) noone will use it.


I would rather work on a non-paralel / sequencial multiplayer game.
-> Meaning, a game that can be played player to player
without the needs that the other player is online at the same time. When the player logs in, he gets previous events, highscores and
actions of other players to compete against.

But it does not work with shooters then obviously.

for ports

you need to dive in to your routers settings and forward ports to your pc.
from what i remember dplay ports were 2302-2400 udp/tcp and 6073udp. but that may not be necessary.
you need to forward these ports to your local ip (possibly something like 192.168.x.x)

for your IP, see whatismyip.org or again in your routers control panel, it should be written somewhere

edit: didnt see the previous 2 posts >.<

wat language was that quadraxas? lol spanish? am lost at multiplayer, lol.. i guess i'll have to learn sooner or later

i like germanunkol's idea but am not fond of requesting that you delay your current project to help me, i know how it is though it would be awesome...

okay now thats...

hows that,you create a basic primitive demo works on lan(or even both server and client in same pc) with the help of aums or workshop 25 then we try to get it work online.

couldnt the multiplayer aum be converted to do such a thing?

Look for Weil Wild West Mutliplayer Game made wit hA6 Its a shooter with more then 2 players and many different weapons.. ok at least 3 or 4 ^^

If you cant find i can upload it.

i didnt check it but probably it will work right away the way i explained without any change on code.

thats quite fine, but am not interested in playing with c-script...

i'd love if we could try and get that aum to work online too @quadraxes

Well, I tried it after all. It wasn't too much work, and it got me some more practice at mutliplayer coding which is not bad for my project at all.

First of all, this is not a demo that's supposed to show off anything but a simple muliplayer connection and WED's default WAD :P.

It's nowhere near perfect, but I don't really want to do too much for it any more cause it's kind of a boring game to code. You can host a game, join a game and shoot at the other player. There's basic movement-prediction and interpolation in there (it's kinda fun and relativly easy coding it for a shooter (good news for you) after having coded it for a space simulator. No tilt angles to worry about here, and even if you add them, they won't go above 90° which is SO much easier) which can be improved but work fine so far I think.

I only tested it on LAN, but it should work over the internet and if you want to i'll try it with you.