Server Hosting Stops Working Overnight

[Ghilloti]

The day before posting this, I had a blast in a four-player multiplayer game with some friends that I hosted, in Alpha 19 Syllepsis and changed nothing afterwards, no firewall settings or network settings. It worked flawlessly.

However, this afternoon we attempted to play again and it simply did not work. If i hosted, others couldn't join, and I was unable to join them if they hosted a game. What's interesting is I was able to join a random player's lobby in Lobby Play, and so were they.

A note I should add is the servers we were able to join in Lobby Play were colored red, whereas if we attempted to host the server would appear green.

The day before, I never manually port forwarded. so I assume my router (Securifi Almond) automatically port forwards. (There's an acronym for what exactly it does, I can't seem to find it anywhere at the moment). However, today when we try again none of us are able to connect. The error message corresponds with one that would be fixed by port forwarding, and yet the other day it worked fine without.

Did something change with the way 0AD handles hosting overnight? Is it a problem with my router/modem? Is it just a temporary problem that will sort itself out?

I would really appreciate some support, thank you!

[yoreei]

I am not from the developers team, but I can help you narrow down the problem.

Quote

Did something change with the way 0AD handles hosting overnight?

This can't be possible since you are using Alpha 19 Syllepsis. You don't receive automatic updates like in some other games, so this can't be the problem. If you were playing the SVN version, it would have been a whole other story.

The term for "automatic port forwarding" is UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). A lot of modern routers have this functionality. It is a protocol through which the game communicates with the router, telling it to port forward 20595. Sadly, it doesn't work like magic. My router supports it too but I was never able to host a game without port forwarding/DMZ. In my opinion you were very lucky being able to host without changing a thing - that's how it is supposed to work though.

Certainly, if you manage to port forward your router, it would work again. I don't think that's the point though. It would be nice if someone could really answer Why this has happened. Till then, if were you, I would do the following:

Request a new IP from the router:

If you are using Windows, open the Command Prompt and type

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

Add an exception to Windows firewall and try again.

Edited February 21, 2016 by yoreei

[yoreei]

Additionally, if you just want to play the game and don't care if it is through UPnP or such, you have the following options:

1. Hamachi. A well-known program to gamers. I haven't used it for a while though, I don't know if it is still the same

2. DMZ. If port forwarding doesn't work or is too hard to manage, you can always DMZ you computer for the duration of the game. It is insecure, yes, but it does the trick. It should be in your router settings. Just point to your local IP or (even better) MAC address.

3. Use a port mapper:

http://www.xldevelopment.net/upnpwiz.php

https://github.com/kaklakariada/portmapper - this one uses Java

These programs basically do the upnp part that 0ad should be doing.

4. VPN. If you have one, you can port forward through it, even if you are not allowed to configure your router. If you aren't using this, look at the other 3 options since VPNs are costly.