TCP/IPs and Shit (Resolved)

[Dualnames]

I'm having this troublesome thing. I'm trying to connect via IPs with another persons computer via an AGS program. The problem is due to firewalls, I can't do that with all the persons. And viceversa. I assume however that we'd have no trouble connecting to a server. So the question lies, where to find such server? (not IRC based) and if its not possible how to set a temporary server from my computer. Damn fixed thanks to JIM REED, GOD ON EARTH.

[Wyz]

What kind of protocol are you looking for?
You can use a webserver but I think you also want some server-side logic. I usually build servers in php, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.
Maybe you can build a server with AGS, a program specially for handling the server logic and stuff. IN that case, let all clients connect to the IP the server runs on.

[Khris]

You need to look into port forwarding.
I live together with four other people and we're all behind one router. So in order for communication from outside to be able to a) pass through the router and b) end up at the right PC, you need to set up a rule in the router's config, usually this is in the NAT menu.
There you enter a trigger port (the port the outside party is going to use, Remote Desktop Connection e.g. uses 3389, VNC uses 5900) and the IP the packets are supposed to be forwarded to (your computer's LAN address).
Then you need to add an exception to the Windows Firewall or disable it altogether.

[Dualnames]

Khris, I found a better way, and that is Hamachi. Hamachi simply starts and you create a room or join an existing one. The IP address of the host is what can be used a server. To explain better, Hamachi overcomes port forwarding without all that really technical stuff

EDIT: However nobody feels happy about installing an external program. Therefore, it appears I need to set up a web-based server or something.

[Calin Leafshade]

For my achievement system I use a php/mysql thing.

I get the TCP/IP plugin to connect to the server and run a php script which returns a string, something like:

AGSA#PASS#1#3#2#+++

then I let AGS parse the data for me using the hashes as separators.

Even though that gets static data you can also use it to write info to a database (I also have a script that does that) and so you could have a client/server relationship going on.

I dunno how fast it would be though.

[Wyz]

I wanted to mention Hamachi but that is something only friends are willing to use. But if that's where you're aiming at, that's fine.
I'm thinking of making a plug-in that handles networking as well as some basic replication in the future. Replication takes care of keeping the two (or more) games synchronized just enough so it does not show. There might be folks out there that could use something like that, but then again if not, it will still be good practise.