Hallo Leute,
Ich hab vorhin mit einem Kumpel HOMM 1 über Internet gespielt. Damit wir nicht wieder vergessen, wie das ging, hab ich eine Schritt-für-Schritt-Anleitung geschrieben. Das Topic hier ist zwar alt, aber weil nur die Wenigsten es offenbar selber hinbekommen haben, poste ich es trotzdem auch hier. Vielleicht hilft's ja irgendeinem.
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How to play HOMM 1 via internet:
This approach uses DosBox (
www.dosbox.com ) and its null-modem emulation
via TCP/IP. Other types of connection, e.g. emulation of modem, should be
possible, but I ran into problems with them which I'll describe later.
This approach works for exactly 2 computers.
Both players should have the same version of DosBox installed. At the time
of this writing, the stable version is 0.74, but use whatever is currently
available. I also assume both players have HOMM 1 set up to run properly in
DosBox.
Decide who hosts and who joins. The host has to listen to a TCP/IP port, so
if he is behind a NAT router, he has to forward a port to his computer. Find
out what IP address the host has, and tell the joiner.
Decide on a TCP port to use. I will use the recommended default of 5000 in
these instructions. The host has to forward that TCP port to his computer if
necessary. (If you don't specify a port, it'll use the telnet port 23,
but we found regular Linux users can't listen there.)
Both players have to edit their dosbox.conf file. (Search the web if you don't
know what that is.) Search for the 4 lines starting with "serial". If you
are the host, change them to this:
serial1=nullmodem port:5000
serial2=disabled
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled
If you're the client, use this instead, but replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX with the
host's actual IP address:
serial1=nullmodem server:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX port:5000
serial2=disabled
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled
After saving the file, the host has to start DosBox first. Afterwards, the
joiner starts DosBox, which will immediately connect to the host. It won't
say anything in the actual Dos shell, but if you run DosBox from a terminal,
you'll get debugging output on the terminal about a successful connection.
I don't know whether this paragraph is necessary for nullmodem emulation.
We did it for both the host and the joiner when still trying to connect via
modem, but it probably can't do harm: In DosBox, switch to the HOMM 1
directory and run "INSTALL". Select option 3 to configure the game's
networking options. Configure port 1. Select option 3 for IRQ 4, select the
highest baud option 6, and anything for the music while playing (we disabled
it with option 2). Back in the main menu, hit 4 to save and exit.
Now, both players have to run the game ("HEROES"). Choose to start a new game,
select multi-player game, then "direct connect". The joiner has to select
"guest", he'll get a note to wait until the host is done setting up the game.
The host selects "host" and decides on map, players, etc. He has to leave
the default of one additional human player, but can set anything about the
number of computer opponents. If he's done, he hits start, and the game will
begin for both players.
Have fun! (Or rather, good luck shines on the users.)
NOTE: Don't use the serial1=... setting for your regular DosBox sessions.
Otherwise, it'll try to connect each time, but if there is no host to connect to,
it'll just show a black screen for 10 secs. You don't want this.
(We couldn't get the "modem" option to work, because the game didn't read
the port from the config file for that connection option. It always used port 23.
We tried entering an IP in HOMM 1, which worked, but we couldn't add the port
after a colon... because we couldn't enter a colon. The colon/semicolon
seems to be the only key in HOMM 1 that doesn't print what it should, it prints
quotes instead. WTF.)
Beste Grüße vom Erleuchteten!