Help on BG II MultiPlayer game

This part of the site is ment for all those that play Baldur's Gate II (SoA & ToB ) multiplayer (MP) games.
Problems that usually occur is :
1. Firewall don't let you through
2. People get "kicked out" of the session

I've looked around and found out some important things.

1.First I'll tell you something more about the firewall.

I myself use Zonelabs, good firewall and I suggest using this one, because it's easy to handle and use.
The other firewalls like NAT, that use port settings, have yet to be discovered by me, working on that.
About Zonelabs firewall :
To use a BG II game with the firewall on, click with the right mouse button on the icon in the taskbar.
click on "restore ZoneAlarm Control Centre".
A new pop-up window opens.
Goto the tabblad "Programs", you should see a list programs in the window.
If you have BG II SoA installed this program should be in the list as well.
Behind the program are some options, like allow connect --> local & internet,
like allow server and liek pass lock. I personally use the option of local & internet with the green tagmark (both of them),
allow server is also checkmarked with the green checkmark,
but if you don't trust your "fellow players" (because they are experienced hackers) don't use the option allow server. (not sure if it works properly then)
Leave the password option, you don't need that.
That's about it with the firewall of zonelabs, if you want a free version of Zonelabs (which works excellent) click here to goto zonelabs
More data about the other firewalls are coming soon.

2. Important things for use with MP-sessions.

What is very important before starting a MP-game is that the framerates of ALL players are the same (check the config program).
Make sure that the one with the lowest framerate is used.
Then the display : use 640*800 for a stable game.
Also a good issue is : make sure that the pathfinding nodes aren't to different from the other players as well.
Also cache size should be about the same. (50 mb difference is max)

4d. Multiplayer

Baldur's Gate 2 has enhanced multiplayer support in comparison to the original Baldur's Gate. We have spent significant time improving the overall gameplay experience and strongly encourage users to give it a try.

Here are a few of the things you should be aware of if you are attempting to play a multiplayer game of Baldur's Gate 2:

- You must install either a Recommended or Full Install to play in multiplayer mode.
- If you are finding slow load times you should increase you cache size to the largest possible size you can fit on your hard drive - this will cause areas to be stored on the hard drive when possible rather than always loading them off CD. You will need a minimum of 300 MB for cache for multiplayer.
- Make sure your game options such as AI updates and Framerates are identical on all systems in the game. Baldur's Gate 2 should not allow you to play without synchronization of these elements, but it is easier to synchronize them prior to a game.
- If you are having performance problems during multiplayer review your configuration using the BG Config program. Multiplayer games put additional stress on performance and thus you might need to alter your configuration settings.

Multiplayer Using a Proxy Server

When playing Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn through a proxy server, you have only two options: you can have all players behind the proxy server, or you can have one person behind the proxy server with the other players outside the proxy server.

You must also set up the proxy server to work with the Direct X networking protocol. Make sure you have the ports 2300-2400 and 47624 set up on the server for both "inbound" and "outbound" messages on both "TCP" and "UDP" protocols.

Miscellaneous Multiplayer Issues:

(Rare bug) Occasionally a resurrected character will no longer have a green circle underneath nor be able to explore new terrain for players other than the player who is controlling that character. Saving the game and reloading, exiting to a new area, or exporting/reimporting that character have always fixed this problem when it occurred in testing (unknown cause, very rare).

More data about this is soon coming, I'm still testing some preferences.
Until then, have fun!!