Red Alert 3 has problems with multiple IP's and Hamachi.

"Chris M. Thomasson" wrote in message
...

"Skybuck Flying" wrote in message
.home.nl...
Hmm...

I just realized something... right after I pressed the post button and
read my own message

I have the pirated version of the game...

You also have the root-kit it surely deeply embedded into your system.

[...]

read here; NOW:


http://www.rootkit.com


your programming skills might be able to clear your infected system!

:^|

Wow talk about a raving idiot. Someone gets upset when he admits to
pirating and everyone harps on him And managed to find the time to
spam 50 useless drivels.

Get a life! *PLONK*

PS I have a number of games on CDs I bought over 15 years ago, they
all still works. I have a number of games on floppy disks that are
over 30 years old and are still working. Only moron destroys the CD
through carelessness.

Impmon wrote:

PS I have a number of games on CDs I bought over 15 years ago, they
all still works. I have a number of games on floppy disks that are
over 30 years old and are still working. Only moron destroys the CD
through carelessness.

Considdering his record of unexplained computer deaths it's not that
surprising though.

What happened to the rest ?

All kaputt ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

Overheat caused the deaths last couple of times...

That problem should now be solved thanks to the great new antec 1200 case I
have !

(And the Scythe Zipang cpu super cooler ! )

Loving it !

Bye,
Skybuck.

And I also removed one graphics cards... they were tooo much sandwhiched !


Bye,
Skybuck

On Nov 7, 4:37*pm, "Skybuck Flying" wrote:
What you say ?

You don't wanna install all that or don't wanna use it or don't trust it ?

You rather wait for patches that probably don't work ?

How are you liking those menu issue's ?!

Nice black screen with red star isn't it !

It's so great !

Bye,
* Skybuck.

Skybuck.... you are legend...

16 november 2008:

Today I tested Red Alert 3 Broadcast Forwarder version 0.04 with somebody
who had Windows Vista, Windows XP and a NAT router (3Com Office Connect
Wireless ADSL 11G).

Egyptian dude, muslim, says he is cisco student didn't know this router,
it's friends router... he borrowing internet... because so expensive.

We can play pretty decently over hamachi.

However when trying my quickly made tool we ran into all kinds of problems:

1. The supplied drivers didn't seem to work on his Vista... it complained
about access denied, invalid service name, and finally nothing showed up in
the public adapters list... tried downloading the latest windows drivers
kit... 2008 build him a new driver for vista... but still nothing
prottest.exe crashed too... weird.

However I think one other person did get the drivers working not sure
though...

2. Vista failing "we" switched to xp. The original/older drivers were
working just fine there.

So far everything was working and setup was ok... we could see each other in
lobby and chat, and create and join game.

However one of us could not talk in the game lobby... the one behind NAT.

He was behind NAT... I could not see his chat... he would also get kicked
out and we can not start the game.

3. Finally analyzing captured wireshark and ethereal logs strange things are
happening to the ip/udp packets:

The game listens and sends from port 8086.

All packets should look like:

ip.udp.source port: 8086
ip.udp.dest port: 8086

At least that's what I believe...

But for some reason his computer is suddenly changing these packets to for
example:

ip.udp.source port: 8085
ip.udp.dest port: 8095

Very strange.

At this point it could be anything:

1. Normal game operation.
2. Malfunction in game network code, there are many so wouldn't be to
surprising.
3. Malfunction in tool or driver... seems unlikely since it's happening to
non-intercepted packets as well, unless
maybe driver mess with normal packets too ?! seems very unlikely but ok...
4. Router might have something to do with it... first I believe this was the
case but now I am not so sure any more... since this was a direct capture
from the PC itself.
5. His older computer was a pentium 4 I think... he also had a newer core
duo... since game was running on older computer this could rule out any
multi threading/multi core related issue's ?...
6. Maybe his cpu/hardware/network card just damaged ?
7. Maybe infected with something nasty... seems unlikely...
8. Maybe virus scanner is messing with the ports.
9. Maybe windows bug.

Further investigation is needed on none-nat-systems.

Most likely cause is bad game-network-code or bad pc or bad nat
router/technology in general.

Further thoughts:

10. My tool could correct all these weird port problems and simply modify
the packets so they always use port 8086. This assumes the game only needs
port 8086. Not yet sure if that's valid assumption.

Further problem is ndisprot probably not suited for modifieing incoming
packets... so that the game will finally receive them since the game is
listen on port 8086 and will only respond to anything that comes into port
8086.

One possibility might be to use pass-thru driver... to fix these kind of
problems.

The dude was very helpfull... the cracks are all fakes... they all use 1.00
probably...

Anybody trying to get their nat routers to work correctly with this game and
version 1.00... is probably wasting their time !

Another remarkable discovery:

For some reason hamachi is working correctly so this makes it even more
mystifieing.

Why is hamachi working ?

We didn't actually test hamachi on his old computer.

So we should do this as well to test if hamachi will fail on his older
computer as well..

It should fail... if it doesn't... then that makes it even more mystifieing.

I used 1.03 but was in reality 1.00 and he used 1.00 all compatibility... so
I do not believe that has anything to do with it.

He also tried to "open" port 8086 on this 3com router... I do not know what
"open" means in this context... it helped little...

We are looking into documentation for this router to see if it's maybe a
router problem... but to me it didn't seem like that... when I look at the
logs...

Maybe the logs are just wrong that's another possibility... but I don't
think so... because I was using ethereal and he wireshark... unless winpcap
has weird bug... but why would that show up now ? doesn't seem to make much
sense..

I did notice some drops in packets because of alt-tabbing or so... this
resulted into icmp's...

Maybe the game reacts to icmp's and switches to different port ? but then it
never switches back again or too anything else...

Also he could launch... somehow... he shouldn't have been able to launch...
but I dropped anyway.

All in all pretty weird stuff.

Most likely reason:

Buggy buggy buggy game network code.

However if this is really true... then why is it working over hamachi ?

This contradicts each other so it can't be true... very very very strange.

This would mean some kind of pc problem or router problem ?!

But why would that show up in his direct pc log ?

Maybe plug and play is communicating with router and thus changing the game
ports ?

Very weird...

Bye,
Skybuck.

Ok lessons learned:

NAT is retarded... if everybody has NAT then everybody is retarded... and
nobody can recgonize the retards any more.

Normal internet is needed to tell if something is badly working or not.

Well today I tested on "normal" internet once again... on the local area
network... without nat.

Some lessons learned:

1. It's not a NAT router problem.

2. The game uses port 8086 for lobby communication.

3. The game switches to port 8084 and 8085 when launching the game.

This is as far as I got because there is another bug in the game:

4. The game loading/connecting has a problem with fast vs slow systems.

The fast system loads from 0 to 100% in under one second.

The slow system is still switching to the load/connection screen.

I think the following is happening:

The fast systems sends a packet: "I am done loading, I am at 100%".

But this packet never reaches the slow system... because the slow system
didn't open the socket yet.

So the slow system will see the fast system as still being at %0.

The games will then hang/freeze.

And the slow system might even crash completely... with blue screen of death
and a reboot !

Fixing all these problems with an external tool is gonna be nasty but it's
possible.

I might implement a winsock api and completely bypass winsock and simply use
an ethernet driver... or maybe even a passthru driver in case I need further
modifications.. though I never used passthru driver... but I did use
ethernet driver...

So for now I could give the ethernet driver a try.

To me it's quite amazing that I was able to play this game over hamachi...
because it depends on so many things going just right...

For example people need to have about the same kind of performance...

Super fast computers won't be able to play because they load too fast !

Go figure !

I also tried vice versa... the fast system hosting the game... and the slow
system joining it...

The same thing happens... the fast system will still send 100% done.. but
slow system will never get it... so then hang again...

This could even happen if the packet is lost in internet..

So all very shaky... at least the 1.00 game version and fake cracks 1.00 to
1.04 which are all 1.00.

Question is if 1.03 or 1.04 actually solved any of these bugs...

Well's there my load for you !

Also... I still haven't figure out... why my system during the internet/nat
test didn't go to the load screen... or why he wasn't able to communicate
with me...

The only possibility seems that my system bound to the wrong adapter
somehow...

It could send packets... but it wasn't receiving some ? or not at all ?

But that seems strange...I could see him chat in the lobby... but not in the
game ?

What explanation is there for that ?

That's very strange... since ports 8086 were still being used.

My system was complaining/sending icmp's that 8086 was not reachable on my
system.

Maybe this was because dexplore.exe (Delphi crap) was still loaded and
running in the system...

Maybe this was still occupieing some port...

Or maybe it was from a previous hang/crash or whatever. But I don't recall
that any application crashed or whatever...

Maybe I had to terminate Red Alert 3... and port 8086 was somehow still
being used in the system... or the stack ****ed up.

Best idea for now is dump winsock, dump windows network technology and
implement own stack to circumvent the crap.

Bye,
Skybuck =D

Maybe this was reason why ms-dos never had tcp/ip stack... ofcourse one
could argued it didn't exist back then.. or they didn't know about it...

But anyway... the idea of excluding a stack from an operating system is
interesting.

It reduces vunerablities to the operating system itself.

The only thing the operating system needs is drivers for packets in packets
out....

So an alternative solution for internet is to embed the tcp/ip stacks into
the applications themselfes.

If the stack ****s up... then only the internet application is affected and
not the operating system.

This also makes it possible for applications to implement alternative
stacks... maybe better stacks or different stack for different needs.

Bye,
Skybuck.