Well, Recluse, simply because CG is a classic that 'the few' have fond memories of and wanted to be able to play again online. And, for the fact that CG, as you know I've told you a thousand times before, models the Comanche much more realistically than in C4. OK so CG is not exactly LB2 for it's complexity, but as you also know from me telling you a thousand times before, the Comanche was so much more easier to fly and operate BECAUSE it was so advanced. In C4 you really are just flying an arcade first-person shooter, but in CG you do actually get to employ real tactics and the sensation of sitting 2 feet above ground level in a valley waiting for a Hind to blindly fly over the top of you before you rack his 'hind with the 20mm is simply unmatched. And graphically, although not hardware-accelerated like in C4, some feel that the graphics in CG are much more 'organic' and you get a really good sense of low-level detail and flight speed.

First of all... thx David for your time with the mod, appricate it bud. Can't wait to check it out.

Well said on your last post flyboy to Recluse, I was really torn apart to see how C4 was planned out and it only stayed on my pc for no longer than an hour... I was kinda upset with the purchase on that one especially when having high hopes with a CG upgrade. Made everyone realize how special this game "CG" was after all the hipe/ trailers of it. As you mentioned, the Cool Desert Night map is favored by me and Grandpa mostly because it is the shortest distance to the fight zone WP1 and I'm mainly a fighter, I like that map the best of all the other choices when it comes to Melee. I'm not saying I dislike Co-op missions and the other maps, I just like to fight in that Comanche around Maui.... and I waste no time getting there to battle it out with Grandpa, thatz what both of us like to do and we are both on the same page when we connect and get in our little room. So basically... my love for the game is in the fight in the Cool Dessert Night map.

And Recluse... I haven't forgot about ya, and I'll say it again as I did years ago, thx for sending me LB2.

Ya'll have great day !

10,001st time is the charm!

David, I joined SimHQ for the sole purpose of saying "THANK YOU!" for your work on this. I haven't actually connected with anyone for a game yet because it apparently doesn't work in Mako's Win98 machine, but I have no doubts that it will work equally to Kali.

What I did yesterday was get a connection between two applications of CG running in this machine. Of course all I could do was establish the connection and get into our usual "Cool Desert Night", but I'm convinced you've done a super job by just that.

You wouldn't believe how many hours I've spent searching for a means of directly connecting CG through the years because Kali, which has been our only way to get a network connection after Novalogic ended their support, has gone down many times as it is right now.

Great achievement! Most appreciated!

If his game is acting upon input from CGoldIP, but a connection fails to occur, then the problem is likely a network security problem. Blocked and/or non-forwarded ports could be an issue. Also, it could be that a software firewall hasn't granted both applications (ie. Comanche Gold and Direct X's network program) permission to access the Internet for both incoming and outgoing connections. The good news is that I didn't do anything too complicated with this program, so Windows 98 should be just fine.



I'm glad you thought of doing this. This was one of my own testing methods. For those who care but don't know already, an alias IP address for your own machine is always 127.0.0.1. This makes such testing somewhat easy no matter what your IP address actually is. Of course, this is only for internal testing from one machine to itself.

Perhaps we should try to get a TCP/IP party going on some time soon -- perhaps on the weekend -- and see how well TCP/IP works for Comanche Gold. We'll probably have to find a decent meeting place, like the SimHQ TS3 server.

One major problem is that Win98 doesn't recognize the P switch (set /p), so the join command has to be executed manually.

Another problem (from our telephone conversation) was that his browser keeps coming up even with those 'update' files deleted, but after my testing I don't think that's a problem. His CG stays minimized after running either the join or host command.

I put those files back here in XP Pro, then just closed the browser when it came up, and it worked perfectly. Also, selecting the client instead of the browser seems to work exactly the same.

I'm going to guess that Win98 just isn't capable, but then I haven't been at the keys of Win98, so I can't say for sure.

Thanks again!

Beat you to it! I was going to perhaps start a new topic for feedback on your program, but, I see posts are still being made here so I won't take the liberty of creating a new topic and will simply add here.


CGoldIP Program Report

Last night, Eugene, Recluse and myself had a chance meeting in TeamSpeak. Well, it was a chance meeting for me to them. Recluse and myself did a test run before Eugene finished what he was doing, and with Recluse hosting, I connected first time and we entered a mission.

Later, with Recluse hosting again, Eugene and I also connected first time (ahem, Eugene didn't quite have it figured FIRST time, but he got there). We played through two missions. Note that both Eugene and Recluse have Windows XP.

Now, Recluse and Eugene both reported some lag, but Eugene later reported pretty strong lag when my game was smooth.

As I was the only one running on Windows 7 - what your program was actually designed for, please allow me to add my side of the report...
Connection was flawless, therefore as far as your program goes - your mission is complete. However, the fact that I had Windows 7 presented its own problems.
* I had to change my desktop screen depth to 16-bit color as otherwise, in-game the whole screen was blues and pinks! (you knew this anyhow, just adding for sake of adding)
* As CG is technically 'broken' on Win7, I had no sound at all.

And because of my infamous router security, I had to turn OFF my router firewall to be able to connect. Just for the purposes of confirmation, I did also try to connect with it ON, but it would simply not do it.

So, summary-wise, here is how it is:

Program: What you promised to deliver you have done, perfectly. Nice job! However, the fact that the program was indeed made to be able to play CG online via TCP/IP on native Windows 7, well, this leads to another problem...

Windows 7/My Router: I, for one, was only able to connect with my router firewall turned OFF, even though I had all suggested ports opened in both my Windows and router firewalls, as well as the required programs allowed access through the Windows Firewall. Players will have to change their desktop color depth (OK no biggie). Players will experience no sound. Lag-wise, it was no better than with WinXP/Kali and in some cases I think it was worse. Switching between windowed and fullscreen, as well as changing screen res in-game, had a noticeable effect on client-side frame-rate drop.

The connection between Windows 7 to Windows XP machines has been confirmed as GO! Therefore the connection of Windows 7 to Windows 7 machines should be a GO! But the entire solution for CG MP via TCP/IP on native Windows 7 has not been met and there are still flaws to overcome. The fact that most of the issues encountered relate to Win7, it would appear that, at least for now, the CGoldIP program is a reasonable, lightweight alternative to Kali for people with, ironically, only Windows XP machines.

That concludes my report!

Hello Flyboy....

After my tests I'm going to predict there is no lag difference, because Kali is doing the exact same thing. Either way you are directly connected to the other player(s) through TCP/IP, only that Kali is using a bridge between IPX and TCP/IP.

Note that the Kali tracker (that's been down for days now) is only for establishing the connection. The IPX protocol used is with the Kali files that are installed in each computer.

When Mako gets this operational on his end I'll be able to report with accuracy because I know exactly how much lag is normal between us....

Take care....

Hi Grandpa and welcome to the forums!

I'm sure you'll be a valuable asset in accurately reporting any lag issues that occur when you're testing, and will no doubt be able to give David higher-quality assessments of his program than I could (from what I've gathered you are capable of).

Well Flyboy, you're probably giving me too much credit, but I have been playing CG on line since the dial-up days.

What you will not believe unless you've used a monitoring program is the extremely small amount of data exchange through an entire game. The speed of connections Vs lag doesn't really matter as I've played near perfect games through dial-up. What does matter that that no packets get lost, because the loss of just a few packets causes an 'out of synchronization', and the worst thing about CG is that it has no built in auto-synchronization. Providing the connection is solid enough the packets will eventually 'catch up', but it will never catch up through a less than stable path.

Since day one the most major complaint about CG has been the lag, which is actually just frame skipping. There has been many ideas, many different things tried, but the lag is part of it and will always be a part of it.

Still, in my opinion CG is the best game ever written. No, it's not so elaborate as most of the latest high-tech games and simulators, but no other offers what CG does.

Take care....