Potential Server-Hosting Tip - please correct if I'm off

[czenkova]

TL;DR : Confirmed - Always connect to any server via port 16261. Specifically, I mean that any time you are entering server settings in Project zomboid to connect to a multiplayer server, you should enter 16261 in the port slot.

 

***Will change in the future per PZ team- this information is good for iwillbackupmysave and onlinetest Beta versions***

 

Hi everybody! I came here and registered to share something that worked for my friends and I when we were trying to set up our PZ Multiplayer server. I didn't stumble across this in any of the Steam discussions, PZ Wiki or on this site, so I wanted to put the info out there in case this is true for everyone.

 

This is a very specific circumstance, and port forwarding is very complicated... this may have been a case of some weird forward causing this to be the correct way to connect to the server or something, so if this info is bad, someone let me know so I can delete the post.

 

So after monkeying with port forwarding for a day we said screw it and decided to try Hamachi. We followed a guide on youtube to the T, but we kept having problems. With the Hamachi setup, we were both able to join each others' hosted servers, but not our own. This is what we ended up doing.

 

-- Both people install Hamachi, one creates a Hamachi Network, the other joins that network.

 

-- Host runs the server, both players connect to the server using the Hamachi I.P. address of the Host.

 

-- Here's what got it to work for us: both players connect to port 16261.

 

We were repeatedly unable to join even with ports 16261-16269 blown WIDE open on our respective systems, but what we noticed is that when a player successfully connects to the server via 16261, the server sees the incoming connection, and assigns the player to an open port.

 

For instance, when I Hosted the server, connected via 16261, and then watched the server- I saw an incoming connection to 16261, and then I saw the server move the connection to port 16262, and voila! My friend was on my server, using port 16262, but with 16261 in his server settings. That same friend with the same setup would fail to connect when directly entering 16262, 16263, et al. into his actual server settings in the Project Zomboid UI.

 

Hope this helps someone! Happy surviving, y'all!

Edited March 29, 2014 by czenkova

[nasKo]

The set default port is used to connect to the server, basically. The others are used to stream the map to the clients, one port per player.

Connecting to a server with any other than the default port (the server host can change the default port in build25), will result in the player not being able to connect.

Was there some misleading info somewhere that made you think players are supposed to use any other port than 16261?

[czenkova]

nasKo- thanks for the response! Sorry, I'm still getting used to this forum and how to know when you've received a response.

 

Um, it wasn't that I was misled, but that the information isn't expressed in the main post http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/5577-multiplayer-open-test-details-inside/ as technically specific and idiot-proof as it possibly could be (in my humble opinion- I write tech support docs as a part of my job, please don't take this as anything more than professional advice.)

 

So the blurb I'm mostly referring to is

 

The server uses the port 16261 for communications, and each player has a download port for getting the map data from the server, starting at 16261. You will need to open a port per player, so for a 32 player server open/forward 16261 - 16293. Instructions for forwarding ports etc can be found all over the place, and will usually involve going onto your router. So google your router  along with 'port forwarding' if you're unsure, or ask a friend. Setting your internal IP (192.168..... obtainable by 'ipconfig' in a command prompt) to the DMZ on your router is a shortcut to doing all this, and will probably be the easiest option, but you'll then be lacking your router's firewall so that's up to you.

 

The earlier instructions on How to join a server don't specify that 16261 should always be the port you connect to either. The first sentence in bold, to a technical person, says "always connect via 16261" but to a layman, it leaves us in the dark. As a noob to port forwarding myself, well you already know from my original post where I went wrong. We were reading mroe into the instructions than intended, basically.

 

Without re-structuring the whole doc, I would say maybe just adding an aside somewhere after the first or second sentence of the paragraph above: "Keep in mind, all players will want to connect to port 16261 while creating their server settings." or something along those lines would help out some less-technical end-users who read the guide and end up in their router settings for an hour or two

 

 

Thanks again for all the work your whole team is doing on this game- it's astounding! PZ is my full-time go-to game right now for SP and MP and I'm only enjoying it more and more!

[Kirrus]

This will change with the advent of game-server hosts starting to host the game- they'll start hosting on alternative ports.

[czenkova]

Right on

 

Thank you for the information! I was only introduced to PZ a few days ago, and spent a couple days Googling YouTube guides and the like trying to figure out why we couldn't both connect when we had those ports all open (my buddy who was hosting was even in DMZ, we were freakin losing our minds, as we're both IT support techs... we were feeling preeeetty dumb). Nowhere did I see "connect via 16261" other than the line that identifies 16261 as the communication port, and I didn't interpret that the way it is intended to be understood.

 

Like I said, might be a good idea to specify that in the main page introducing MP. It's not like the page says "Once you host the server, tell everyone who wants to join which open port they need to manually connect to!" but because we were trying to setup a 2 player game, and to be honest neither of us has any experience with port forwarding, it didn't occur to us how silly we were being by doing that.

 

Thanks again for everything guys!