Natural Selection 2 Lan-Party

XuXu · January 2011

Hello everyone! May you can help me!

Me and my mates will hosting a nice little LAN-party in February with approx. 40 - 50 people.

So my question is, it is possible to play NS2 in offline-mode and is there a opportunity to just use one Steam-Account with the NS2-Key (share it just for the lan, no internet)

Wish to promote the game a bit and it will be fun to see the response from my mates! :)

GREETZ

XuXu

Angelusz · January 2011

As much as I'd love to be able to type a long-winded guide on how to achieve this, I'm afraid that on all accounts you'll have to suffice with the following answer:

Nope.

derWalter · January 2011

no lan mode no crack either - maybe there will be a spawn edition like in sc1?

:P

SN.Wolf · January 2011

has anyone tried to run via a vpn on a dedicated server but then again, unless you have your own vpn within your network it would be the same as running a internet game. I'm sure it can be done easily if you experiment a bit.

Asraniel · January 2011

Ns2 in a lan should work. Worst case you have to manualy join the server trough the console (because in the server browser you will see the internet IP, so you will take the detour over the internet). Other than that i don't see any particular problem

XuXu · January 2011

tried it in following case:

cut off internet-connection, Steam in offline mode. Able to start the game but cannot create a Listen-Server (error message: authentication failed)

tried it with a dedicated server start (without inet) --> it runs but I cannot connect to it --> (authentication failed)

so far I didn't get it but is there a config for setting lan on true or something similar? Cannot be, the game really requires internet ???

Greetz

XuXu

Angelusz · January 2011

In your last post you adressed exactly what everyone's missing; the authentication server.

Sure, saying it's "easy to do if you try hard enough" is <b>easy to say</b>, but it doesn't change any facts.

Unless UWE chooses to add some code to allow for this (or, better would be if I missed something), I'm afraid you can't do this right now.

AgathoSAreS · December 2018

Well, same problem.
Followed the development process, bought the game shortly after release.
And while one can say I had my fair share out of the game, and rightfully so, the day came
when only one server had people on it, and i couldn't join because it was rookies only.

Next day the same, and the day after.
So the game was dead to me, i was only able to join empty servers. Nobody else came.

I would love to replay it on a Lan next week at the office, but Steam DRM prevents this, and while the dev-blog states otherwise, last week i checked and there's normaly only 1 or two server up with people playing, and i think nobody wants to spend 100 bucks per 10 keys on a basically dead game, for a 2h session at the office.

Such missed opportunities to promote the game, may also factor in this state. Idk.
That you get redirected to subnautica- (which i loved btw, excellent job on that) forums for ns2 forum login says it all, no?

And ofc it has been pirated years ago, and even in 2011 it was available for offline Lans (working confirmed), but you never know what you get when downloading illegal provided software.

I don't think Unknown Worlds would have suffered providing keys to one or two of this lan requests, when not making it public.
But that the promotion aspect would have overweight the "But then they all want it!", factor.

SquishpokePOOPFACE · December 2018

There's a couple cracked NS2 versions on TPB but they will be several years out of date. If I were lucky enough to have a group big enough to do a NS2 LAN party I'd fork out the money to buy keys for everyone and set up a quasi-LAN. Sure the dedicated server would be connected to the internet but oh well.

It's $25 for a 4-pack, so $5 a person at $50 if you have 8 players. It'll be $70 for 10 players.

If you are allergic to spending money then you could always play the original NS or other fun LAN games, such as Tremulous, Tribes, The Specialists, Urban Terror, Quake 3 Arena, or even WolfET.

Nintendows · December 2018

Just do family sharing lol

Nordic · December 2018

Nintendows wrote: »

Just do family sharing lol

You can't run the same game at the same time if only one person owns the game.

Also, I don't know what time you were playing when you saw only 1 or 2 servers, but there are usually a minimum of 3 full servers even at the slowest of times such as late at night with as many as 13 full servers during peak times.

skav2 · December 2018

Check your filters on the server browser if you are only seeing 2 servers.

GhoulofGSG9 · December 2018

AgathoSAreS wrote: »

Well, same problem.
Followed the development process, bought the game shortly after release.
And while one can say I had my fair share out of the game, and rightfully so, the day came
when only one server had people on it, and i couldn't join because it was rookies only.

Next day the same, and the day after.
So the game was dead to me, i was only able to join empty servers. Nobody else came.

I would love to replay it on a Lan next week at the office, but Steam DRM prevents this, and while the dev-blog states otherwise, last week i checked and there's normaly only 1 or two server up with people playing, and i think nobody wants to spend 100 bucks per 10 keys on a basically dead game, for a 2h session at the office.

Such missed opportunities to promote the game, may also factor in this state. Idk.
That you get redirected to subnautica- (which i loved btw, excellent job on that) forums for ns2 forum login says it all, no?

And ofc it has been pirated years ago, and even in 2011 it was available for offline Lans (working confirmed), but you never know what you get when downloading illegal provided software.

I don't think Unknown Worlds would have suffered providing keys to one or two of this lan requests, when not making it public.
But that the promotion aspect would have overweight the "But then they all want it!", factor.

Hi,

it's not well known but ns2 has a lan mode. Just start up the dedicated server with the -hidden start parameter. The dedicated server binary is part of your ns2 installation and can be found in the x64 folder or otherwise just download the dedicated server package (4940). More details about the dedicated server can be found at the wiki.

For the clients make sure steam is set to the offline mode and connect to the server via the connect console command if it doesn't show in the server browser (steamwork's lan broadcasting is a little funky and doesn't always work).

I have played the game this way multiple times with various people at smaller and larger LAN parties.

Additionally even during the lowest player count peaks times there are more than 2 servers populated (you can verify this yourself via e.g., https://ns2servers.pw/)

Nintendows · December 2018

Nordic wrote: »

Nintendows wrote: »

Just do family sharing lol

You can't run the same game at the same time if only one person owns the game.

Also, I don't know what time you were playing when you saw only 1 or 2 servers, but there are usually a minimum of 3 full servers even at the slowest of times such as late at night with as many as 13 full servers during peak times.

Maybe it's a bug with steam, but if one person who is running the game goes in offline mode, the other people can boot up the game just fine. I used to do it all the time at lan parties.

GhoulofGSG9 · December 2018

Nintendows wrote: »

Nordic wrote: »

Nintendows wrote: »

Just do family sharing lol

You can't run the same game at the same time if only one person owns the game.

Also, I don't know what time you were playing when you saw only 1 or 2 servers, but there are usually a minimum of 3 full servers even at the slowest of times such as late at night with as many as 13 full servers during peak times.

Maybe it's a bug with steam, but if one person who is running the game goes in offline mode, the other people can boot up the game just fine. I used to do it all the time at lan parties.

That's not a bug but a feature :P However clients running steam in the offline mode will fail the server's steam auth check unless it runs in the lan/hidden mode.

pedal2000 · May 2019

Hi, giving this a shot - I have got the dedicated server going; and I connect another computer it shows up on the CMD prompt as "Client Connecting..." etc with the IP; however then client computer then proceeds to time out.

It seems to be tied to going offline - I can start the server as "hidden", join it by connect IP in the command prompt, but then when I swap to offline it hangs on "authenticating".
Any ideas?

pedal2000 · May 2019

With Ghoul's help this was solved - for any future googling souls the answer is this:

Once you have the dedicated server installed (through the steamCMD) you need to make sure to use the server.exe from the x64 folder - not the one in the main folder. EG: I used the SteamCMD to install to "NS2Server". Within NS2Server there was a server.exe; but I had to go to x64 and use the server.exe located there.

Further, make sure to be adding the -hidden command to the actual property of the link, rather than just the name. I was launching the server without -hidden activating.

Otherwise I can confirm as of May/2019 that I was able to connect with the same offline steam account multiple times to a single (LAN) server.

Natural Selection 2 Lan-Party

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