Playing Moo2 over the internet with Hamachi

Today Alex-D and I were successful in running a Master of Orion II v1.40 (DOS) network game over the internet through Hamachi. I will try to provide some instructions here so others may also try this. In order to use these instructions you will need WINDOWS XP PRO SP2 as Windows XP Home does not include DOS mode IPX.

Start by installing Master of Orion II v1.40 following the usual instructions. Be sure to create the desktop icon. You can skip Step 6 about kali. Test the game and see if you can play a solo game without any problems. Use the desktop icon to start the game.

Next, you need to setup Hamachi. Download Hamachi and run the installer. Go through the wizard. Setup is simple. I suggest you reboot before proceeding.

After Hamachi is installed, you need to setup the IPX networking. Start by installing NWLink IPX/SPX on the Hamachi network interface. Open up the network connections in the Control Panel.

Right click the Hamachi icon and pick properties. Install NWLink IPX/SPX protocol if it is missing (click the install button). After it is installed you should uncheck everything in under "This connection uses the following items" except for NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS compatible Transport Protocol, Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and Client for Microsoft Networks.



After the IPX protocol has been installed, you will need to edit the c:\windows\system32\autoexec2.nt file and change as shown below. The lines in bold will need to be added and the lines referring to Kali should be removed to avoid conflict.

@echo off
REM Load DOS mode CD-ROM support
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\mscdexnt.exe

REM Load DOS mode DPMI support
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\dosx_sp1

REM Set parameters for Sound Blaster Emulation
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T3

REM Load DOS mode IPX support
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\nw16
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\vwipxspx

Once you have all of this setup, you should be able to use Hamachi to play Moo2.

To start a game you must first open up Hamachi and click "Create or Join a Network". One player will create a network and all other players will need to join the same network.



Once everyone has joined the network, you should be able to start a standard LAN game using the Master of Orion II v1.40 icon on your desktop.

New site layout completed

Over the past few days I have redesigned this site. It is now completed for the most part.

I have corrected the problems with the comments in the blog template so now I will be allowing comments on this site again. Also, comments are now easier to read. I have also lightened up some of the text and links so they are easier to see.

Master of Orion 2: Tenth Anniversary BattleTournament

Those that are interested in a challenge should head on over to Siron's blog and check out the Tenth Anniversary Battle Tournament. It looks like fun.

A few small bugs with /nohousing in the b22 patch

Some kali players have reported a few small bugs with the latest patch. For the most part, they are not critical so I have decided to wait a few weeks to release a fix for them. The known bugs in b22 are as follows:

• The /nohousing switch applies only to players that have the switch on their command line. This was not my intention. All players should receive the settings from the host.
• The /nohousing switch on the command line can override the settings in a saved game when loaded. This includes the stored settings for some other switches. The settings should be loaded from the save game file and all command line switches should have no effect game when loaded.
• The population growth shown in the colony screen on turn 1 is not correct until either some units are moved around or the turn is ended. This bug is only a display bug and has no effect on the actual population growth (it is calculated at the end of the turn and then applied).

I have already developed a solution to these bugs except the display bug and they will be included in the next patch release. For now, you can work around these bugs by simply having all players put the /nohousing switch in their command line (if you are intending to play with that switch).