Trouble connecting

[Guest Valefar]

Hi. This is my first forum post. I've read some other topics that touch on the problem I'm having, but am unsure if it's the same thing. Probably is. I'm not very internet savvy. Anyway, I used to play Trench Wars (years ago) as a teenager and never had any problems connecting then. So today I remembered how fun it was and got very nostalgic at the thought of playing again.

 

When I first run the exe, the game opens with the zone list and most of them are green. Specifically, Trench Wars is green. Awesome, it's still up and running I thought. I go to profile and create my profile, and then try to connect to Trench Wars. The screen changes to the star field and "connecting to SSCU Trench Wars" is at the bottom. Nothing ever happens and after a few seconds I get an unable to connect error and a website directing me here. I tried several times, and a couple times it prevented my browser from connecting to the internet for a few minutes and "no internet access" when I mouse over my network icon.

 

So when it fails to connect, I push ok and it goes back to the start screen, and then all of the zones are now red until I restart. I thought maybe it was a compatability problem, so I tried running in Windows Xp SP 2 compatability mode and checked "Run as administator". No dice. This lead me to believe it is a Windows Firewall problem, but normally when something is asking for access to the internet, my firewall will ask me if I want to allow it. In this case it doesn't. According to some other posts on here, it could be my router. This makes sense, because trying to connect causes the same behavior as a program I have called uTorrent. uTorrent forums suggested using port forwading to get past the problem, and I have no idea how to do that.

 

Some posts on here suggest opening certain ports, but I haven't seen any that explain how to do that and I wouldn't know for sure which ports to open anyway. Could anyone walk me through opening these ports for Trench Wars? If so, I have a couple questions that need to be answered first. Does opening these ports compromise the security of my PC any? Like I mentioned, I do use a peer to peer program and wouldn't want open ports letting people get in to steal any information like credit card numbers and stuff like that. Also, is there any way I can set a rule in my firewall to allow only Trench Wars access to these ports? Could it just be my firewall and not my router that is the problem? If so, how do I go about adding Trench Wars to my firewall to allow access?

 

Any help is appreciated as I would love to play this game again. Thanks.

[Cheese]

just dmz your entire computer

[Guest Valefar]

dmz?

[Dav]

which firewall are you using? Can you look at the programs list within your firewall and grant access to continuum?

[Guest Guest]

i am using windows firewall. i actually figured out how to add continuum, but something still isn't right. sometimes it will connect now, and sometimes it wont. i have both ingoing and both outgoing rules enabled. based on what i saw in another thread, i tried changing the protocol type from tcp to udp. that seemed to help a little more. the problem now is that, when it does connect, i have a really good connection. but if i try to browse while in the game, my browser doesn't work, and my network icon indicates no internet access. this happens with uTorrent as well, and is supposedly some kind of bandwidth inhibitor caused by my isp because they know i am using p2p networking. i dont think that would be the case with continuum, although the behavior is exactly the same. but at least i can connect most of the time now so not as much of a big deal. the only problem with the browsing was joining a team. i had to alt-tab out to login to my profile from the website to join the team. just a little annoying to have to close continuum out to browse the website, then when trying to get back on continuum, it won't connect. it may be that it uses ports at random (as far as i can tell) and trench wars requires a specific port range in order to function properly (according to an old thread). i noticed when messing around with windows firewall that i can actually specify which ports it uses, but i dunno which ports are required for each zone to work. i think the problem is prolly my isp or my router though, and if that's the case, i will just have to deal with it because i dunno how to do anything at all to my router settings.

[Dav]

Do you restrict upload data rates with u torrent? Unlimited can consume all of your bandwidth causing issues for other programs.

[Guest Guest]

yeah i got uTorent so it works perfectly by restricting upload/download rate and number of peers lowered. I only use uTorrent once a month or less really. No other bandwidth hogging or cpu hogging programs are running when I run continuum. I actually have it working now . Changing it from TCP to UDP fixed the problem as far as being able to connect. it still hogs al my bandwidth though, but that's no big deal. i don't plan on browsing while i play. i messed with the advanced options some. i checked everything to be written to system memory. i dunno what this does, but i assume all that stuff gets written to my hard drive so it won't have to constantly download? idk i'm gonna see if it helps.

 

now i am wanting to try and use a gamepad to play. i think that would be pretty awesome. i'll prolly start a new thread on setting one up if there isn't a topic already out there. my gamepad doesn't use xinput so i was wondering if i could use x360ce to emulate xinput for my controller. i dunno if continuum uses xinput the same way as other games do. i know some games aren't compatable. in options, it only recognizes a few of my controller buttons when trying to bind them. it doesnt recognize the dpad or joysticks or trigger buttons . but thanks for the replies. glad i can play now.