I'd like to know how to host or join multiplayer games, without Yang, meltdown, or other outside programs.

Any multiplayer that I play would be with my friends anyhow, so I'd like to know how to make/connect to games using the things that came with the GOG bought blood.

Any help?

For Blood I:
Some of the info in this how to is a little old. I should rewrite it for GoG, but...

Bloodbath HowTo

Disregard the Hamachi stuff

Use your dosboxBlood.conf rather than dosbox-0.73.conf. You shouldn't have to change the any of the mount information, but you will want to launch setup.exe rather than Blood.exe.

The basics of it is, if you are running the server run IPXNET STARTSERVER
If you are the client IPXNET CONNECT [Server's IP address]

If you will probably have to tunnel through your router if you expect a connection from outside of your LAN.

Once the connection is established, run setup.exe and setup a Network game.

I've tried this using the Start Client/Start host game links for GOG version. It works so far for LAN.

May I ask though, do network sockets mean anything?

Not particularly, but if you happen to have multiple bloodbaths going on the same network, or another IPX service running on the server, it would result in a communications error. Changing the socket number would be a way to fix the conflict.

For instance, if you had the occasion to try and run a Bloodbath between a Windows 2000 box and a Windows 9x box you had to change the socket number because windows 2000 had something running on the default socket Blood was configured for.

Ok. So my friend is able to connect (we're using hamachi). But it's lagging like hell, is there a less laggy method? Like can I port forward?

If you are on a LAN, you should only have to open up UDP port 213, in windows firewall for DOSBox to accept connections.

If you want establish a connection directly over the internet, you can set your router to forward UDP 213 to your computer. portforward.com has a number of guides and probably has a guide for your router. It does try to sell you a utility that will do it for you, but you can skip the add using the link at the top right that says "Click here to skip this add..." to get to the guide.

As a note, you don't have to use port 213, you can use any available UDP port you might already have open if you just add the port number to the end of the IPXNET command: ie. IPXNET STARTSERVER 26000 for the server and IPXNET CONNECT #.#.#.# 26000 for the client.

Unless they are under a really bolted down network, the client shouldn't have to do anything on their end as far as opening ports for a connection. It's just needed for the server side.

Ok, so he's able to connect now. WITHOUT hamachi, and it's definantly less laggy, like by about 40%.

Is there anything else I can do to reduce the lag, or are we stuck with this? (This is without any outside programs running, like skype.)

That's great! I can't think of anything off hand. DOSBox has some modem emulation features that may work better than the IPX emulation, but I doubt it will. I've never tired it myself.