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Emulate Gamespy Support
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fallorn Many GoGs utilized the Gamespy multiplayer middlewear, but with Gamespy folding the online component to many games vanished. Some products such as GameRanger attempt to solve this, but a solution built into all GoG games and mediated through the Galaxy client has the potential to be more widely used, regrow online play for some old games, and would provide a solid benefit to all of your customers.
johnny5wd For the Civilization 4 series of games, there is an open source project to replace GameSpy, which you can find here:
github.com/novice-rb/PRMasterServer
For other games, there used to be a product called "Free Standard Game Server", which initially started out as a Battle.Net clone, but later added support for other types of multiplayer platforms as well (such as for Command & Conquer, Red Alert, and so on).
There were even games which were specifically designed for it. Submarine Titans is a prime example.
Unfortunately,since the change in ownership at Blizzard, FSGS's developers received cease and desist threats from Blizzard's lawyers as having a Battle.Net clone was now considered a breach of DMCA and the license agreement of Blizzard products.
In the early days, Blizzard actually included third party support (like Kali) for its games on their own CD-ROMs (for example pre-Battle.Net DOS versions of WarCraft II). They also allowed you to play multiplayer in your own LAN with only one official copy of the game using 'spawned' installs (and only the original could be used in single player).
The new ownership changed everything and the open and even encouraging attitude was replaced by traditional corporate doctrine.
What I'd do now is set up some sort of VPN to at least have some LAN multiplayer options. This can be done through OpenVPN, Hamachi.cc and numerous other means but ONLY if the games allow LAN multiplayer.
One would think this would solve the issues at least for those games with LAN multiplayer support. Actually, NO, it does not.
In the GoG version of Civ4, multiplayer only works using direct IP, and only up to a maximum of 2 players (host and guest). Any additional players will simply replace the first guest.
In the original version, up to 18 players can join, be it through LAN games browser or direct IP, in addition to GameSpy.
In the Steam version, GameSpy support has been replaced with Steam support, so at least there it will work.
The play by e-mail option will not work, because one cannot provide credentials to the e-mail server, making this feature unusable at all.
So the only way that remains would be hot seat, which requires everyone to be at the same console and look away while others are managing their civilizations. Which will be problematic if trying something like remote control apps (Team Viewer etc.). If they work at all.
So yes, I fully and totally agree with you regarding GameSpy support. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem high on GoG's priority list (and only received 38 votes at the time of writing).
I would suggest the same for DOSBOX-run games. Use the Daum build of DOSBOX to provide IPX multiplayer over UDP (notable example Master of Orion 2, which now will not work because the included DOSBOX version has no IPX-over-UDP support enabled. Instead you need to play through GoG Galaxy to enable multiplayer for that game. Quite cumbersome.
GoG: please look into these options, or at least provide them as goodies with games that require it.... :-)
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