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The TL LSL (TLS just sounds wrong) is going on strong, and I keep wanting to jump on ICCup and relive some nostalgia. My SCBW is still my favorite game of all time, but I find myself playing SC2 and League of Legends much more than my favorite game. Why is this? The real elephant in the SCBW room are the network and port forwarding issues that have never been adequately resolved. This is the real elephant in the BW room.
The latency/ip issues. I have tried to run SCBW on about 20 different computers/networks in the last year or two, but I have probably a less than 10% success rate given various router, computer, firewall, IP, and ISP issues. This is ridiculous.
Watching other players play always makes me itch. I'm not an excellent player (D+ my all time high.) However, SCBW is a game that is virtually impossible perfect. So no matter how good someone is, they will make mistakes. A great observer/director can cover a lot of the minor mistakes and give an excellent player an additional aura of invincibility. Regardless, whenever I see a mistake I naturally think "I can do better than that!" This is, of course, ridiculous. This game is very very hard. Either way I'm suddenly motivated to play.
League of Legends and SC2 have excellent netcode. I can jump on and easily join a game or click a matchmaking button. The games are very responsive and easy to get into. SCBW by comparison can be nearly impossible. While I was at college, I couldn't play on ICCup because the college's IP was generally banned by ICCup. When I'm at home, my ISP had a block of some sort that made it impossible to port-forward SCBW. At a friend's house, I can play but there's a lot of random crashes because of Windows 7, so I've started played in windowed mode to avoid that.
So when my friends tell me they want to play, we have loads of trouble joining each other. Everyone knows the tricks, syncing by joining someone else's hosted game, using programs like Hamachi to effectively LAN over long distances, etc. etc. When a new player actively asks me to teach them to play, I sometimes have to decline because they have connection issues neither of us can resolve.
So what can be done? Short of a complete re-write of the game code or possibly a complete switch of the community over to SC2BW or one of the similar maps, this may be almost impossible. Maybe an effective infographic, program to do it automatically, or something like that could help? Maybe live events are the secret, true LAN play is one of the remaining unique strengths of SCBW.
As it is, it's incredibly frustrating to not be able to play SCBW even when I want to. I feel like this problem has been holding the community back even longer than we even know.
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Belgium9947 Posts
Forwarding your ports should ALWAYS allow you to host a game.
Problems arise when hosting a game between people on the same network and someone outside it (which I assume is the case for you, if you're playing with RL friends). That never worked unless you use things like Hamachi.
That said, I've heard before that some people still get latency issues on iCCup even after correctly forwarding their ports since recently (and dont have that problem on Fish server), so the more recent iCCup server version might be having some issues.
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Norway25712 Posts
I honestly don't think this is the biggest issue at all. I'm not gonna be able to identify the actual issue, but I've never had any issues creating or joining games except for latency from time to time, after forwarding ports.
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i think about 50% of people on iccup cant host games because of various problems.
a friend of mine cant host games, so we tried to forwards ports and stuff like that, but after 3-4 hours of searching for the right portforwarding of the router, making sure ip is static... nothing changed. he still cant host and he drops if the game has more than 2 people.
i think its a pretty big deal.
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I can't host because college internet. ;;
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10387 Posts
100% agreed, if a solution could be found then it would really open doors for BW
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Canada11367 Posts
Yeah it is a pretty consistent problem with people not being able to host/join. Especially if you have a combination of multiple people on the same wireless network and a couple people spread out. Hard to port-forward for everyone and Hamachi has dropped down to 5 people.
Physical lan still works amazingly though.
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He's got a good point about the hosting difficulties. Port forwarding isn't even possible for a lot of people these days because apartments, University dorms, etc. do not always have access to the router. Not being able to host really hurts your options on the small private servers like ICCUP, which are the only places left to play 1v1s.
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Iccup only works like occasionally at my school, but at least we can lan :\
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TLADT24920 Posts
I had problems hosting but I was able to open my ports and I can make games now. I can understand how it's an issue though. Finding games at one's level can be such a pain on iCCup and maybe it also causes less people to play due to these issues  Not sure if it's as game changing as you say it is though.
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My router is fucked, and I can't open ports on it. I end up spending 20 minutes on ICCUP searching for games, and at least 3 times get caught by that one dude with closed ports who made a game and it takes Bnet a full minute to go "I can't has connects"
It really does suck
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I played a bit of Broodwar when sGs started becoming a thing (I always had terrible players who were way better than me to play with, help teach my the game, etc) but then break was over and I went back to school and couldn't really play anymore. I have NO idea how to forward ports, and my attempts at home have failed. Possibly once I graduate and get my own apartment (hopefully with own internet) I'll be able to get back into it, but for now I just have to play singleplayer.
So yes, I would say its a major issue. Especially considering I'm usually pretty good with computers but can't do shit when it comes to port forwarding. Oh well.
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I'm very surprised iccup hasn't added upnp support to their launcher yet. 99% of routers could be automatically configured via upnp, it would save so many headaches.
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On January 14 2013 11:55 Sinensis wrote:
He's got a good point about the hosting difficulties. Port forwarding isn't even possible for a lot of people these days because apartments, University dorms, etc. do not always have access to the router. Not being able to host really hurts your options on the small private servers like ICCUP, which are the only places left to play 1v1s.
This, living in an apartment complex where I have no router access, so I can't do anything to host. And even worse I can't be in game with more than one other person, or else everyone will disconnect. Feelsbadman
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United States2906 Posts
Yeah I believe this is definitely a major issue that isn't cured simply by telling people to forward their ports. I've been able to get hosting capacity intermittently by using a program for upnp port forwarding, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who want to play Brood War, try to forward their ports, but still have connection problems for any of innumerable reasons.
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On January 14 2013 12:39 R1CH wrote:
I'm very surprised iccup hasn't added upnp support to their launcher yet. 99% of routers could be automatically configured via upnp, it would save so many headaches.
As far as I know there are no developers at iCCup that actually code stuff, outside of the DotA/WC3 crew.
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That's good to know... I always thought there was not a solution to the two computers on the same network issue.
Of course needing to edit registries is not what I would call an easy fix. And is certainly enough of a barrier to discourage simply finding a quick 2v2 with a friend.
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If anyone need help port forwarding, I can try to solve it, just pm me. I'm a support admin at iccup right now :D
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On January 14 2013 12:39 R1CH wrote:
I'm very surprised iccup hasn't added upnp support to their launcher yet. 99% of routers could be automatically configured via upnp, it would save so many headaches.
Could you do it for them please? : 3
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EPT
