I'm just trying to get a game going over a LAN. Multiplayer games appear in the list but I can't join! Clicking join just displays "please wait", then the game disappears from the list and reappears again. Typical LAN problems like firewalls shouldn't be the issue here, because the game is visible. Has anyone successfully connected to a local multiplayer game in Dungeon Keeper 2?

From this thread - http://www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_keeper_series/dungeon_keeper_2_multiplayer/post5

"It does support multiplayer but it is so old that it cannot traverse NAT. Direct connections only. like plug your computer directly into the internet modem or everyone is on the same LAN."

Solution - http://www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_keeper_series/dungeon_keeper_2_multiplayer_unable_to_join_host/post2

http://keeperklan.com/forums/17-DK2-Multiplayer

You can also try GameRanger - http://www.gameranger.com/

What a nonsense. NAT is transparent for applications. It's rather a matter of protocols but more important NAT isn't even used within a LAN.

You don't need Hamachi or Gameranger to play multiplayer within a LAN. If the TCP-IP Socket mode doesn't work, try the IPX mode, but install an here).

Btw, GOG's version is known for having issues with AI and multiplayer, but you can use the General Improvement Mod to get these things fixed. devilhood provided a good step-by-step: http://www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_keeper_series/dungeon_keeper_2_online_problems/post8

The newest version of GIM is here:
http://dungeon-keeper.net/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=53&func=view&catid=14&id=31171

I think I know what the problem is, although I haven't tested it yet. I was running DKII.exe in wine on my linux computer and DKII-DX.exe in windows on another computer. The conflicting exes most likely were causing problems. I suspect if I ran DKII-DX.exe on two windows computers it would work fine. I can't test with my current setup because DKII.exe doesn't run in windows 7 and DKII-DX.exe doesn't run in wine on linux.

Yes, that's pretty likely. You can try using DKII.exe from GIM on both machines.
If the game starts on your Win 7 system, but you get a black background in the main menu or a crash, hardware acceleration might not work properly, so we switch to software mode.
- Quit the game and open regedit (press Windows-Key + R to open the run dialog and enter regedit)
- Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bullfrog Productions Ltd\Dungeon Keeper II\Configuration\Video
- Set "Engine Id" to "4"
- Set "Screen Hardware3D" to "0"
- Restart the game and check if it's running.

You can also try this tweak and check if the game runs with GOG's DKII.exe now.