How to set up a Warcraft 2 LAN party
Another article in the “I need to write this for myself and what better place then on my blog” series:
If you are familiar with the old (but great) Warcraft 2 game, then you know its a great multiplayer game but unfortunately you need a “Battle.net server” to play and even if the Blizzard servers were up (and for this old game, they’re not though there are a few 3rd party free servers) – you probably don’t want to have all the party goers connect up to an external server.
So how to run a Warcraft 2 LAN party?
First step – Install Warcraft 2.
Second step – get a computer running Ubuntu and using the Software Center install “bnetd”1. Note the IP address of the computer running the bnetd server.
Third step – On each computer where you have installed Warcraft 2 (either “retail” or “spawn”) open the “Warcraft 2 Battle.net Edition with NoCD patch” CD and run the “Battle.net Loader”. In the main menu select “GSFS servers”, and in the dialog box that opens, select “INTRANET” and type in the IP address of the server that you set up with the bnetd server. Now click “Load” and when Warcraft 2 starts, select Multiplayer, then Battle.net, then at the right side select “Intranet” with the IP address you type earlier and finally “Connect”. You should now be connected to your local “fake” Battle.net server and can game on!
- It will start running automatically, don’t worry about that [↩]