[Wine] Network play in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

[Gert van den Berg]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Christoph Korn <c_korn at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hello,
> I have installed C&C: Red Alert 2 in Ubuntu.
> Now I want to play in a network.
> I have already put the wsock32.dll [1] into the game directory and
> have set up an overwrite rule for wsock32 in winecfg.
> It should replace the IPX protocol with UDP protocol.
> Now there is a network card shown in the settings [2] and the
> network menu opens ingame now. I have set up Red Alert 2 on
> different machines but they don't see each other in the network menu.
> Also when one player opens a game it cannot be seen in the other
> machines.
> I have already checked out the appdb [3], but did find a helpful
> comment.
>
> Has someone got the network play to work?
>
I had a shot at it earlier as well, without success.
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=15853

Some issues:
The UDP patch does not seem to work on Wine (see Vitamin's reply). It
might be that a large part of Wine's network implementation is in the
buildin wsock32? (Someone more familiar with the source code might be
able to answer that) (It might be that that wsock32 only intercepts
IPX and call the real wsock32 for the UDP part, but that Wine does not
allow that to work...)

IPX works, as root, or at least that is what I'm told. It would not be
able to LAN with Windows versions using the UDP patch though...

PvPGN works as well (kindof at least) but is a mission to set up...

There are a few utilities that allow tunneling IPX over IP for Linux
as well, no idea about their compatibility and ease of use.

Did not try POSIX capabilities...

There seem to no way, other than Westwood online / PvPGN to play
between Windows Vista and Wine... (Vista removed IPX support)

The real (long term) solution would probably be if Wine / the kernel
added an option to emulate IPX over IP (like Dosbox), with various
compatibility options... Another would be if Wine implemented enough
APIs that native wsock, and its replacements can work. (This might
take )

Gert