Obscure old mac Gaming question for Warcraft II BNE

[sailingdarter]

I know the chances of getting an answer are remote but I was wondering if anyone knew what TCP/UDP ports were used for the LAN mode play for for the Mac version of Warcraft II BattleNet Edition.


I was just hoping to avoid having to set-up a game between 2 of my classic macs connected to an old school ethernet hub and having another machine with wireshark capture the traffic.


So the gem of the idea behind why I am trying to get this information is because I found out that the GOG version of Warcraft 2 BNE uses a IPX wrapper to re-encapsulate its traffic into UDP packets. And if the port that this IPX wrapper uses can be changed I figured it would be a cool experiment to see if you can change the port to mac the port that the Mac version of Warcraft 2 uses in its TCP/IP net play mode and get a Vintage Mac to play a LAN game of Warcraft 2 with a modern machine.


At this point my googling has led me to believe that no one has tried this sort of thing and that I am definitely in uncharted territory. But I figured I would throw the question out there just in case


Cheers

 

[AphoticD]

I might not fully understand the setup, but I do recall using a control panel (on OS 8) called MacIPX to play Warcraft II on a LAN with other gamers (maybe including PC version?) it was a long time ago.

 

[AphoticD]

I dug out my old Warcraft II for Mac disc and it looks like the MacIPX software is in the System Extas folder. I would try this before trying to map UDP <> TCP/IP

 

[sailingdarter]

I dug out my old Warcraft II for Mac disc and it looks like the MacIPX software is in the System Extras folder. I would try this before trying to map UDP <> TCP/IP

The problem with this approach is that even though it would enable playing network games with Windows machines of a similar vintage, The IPX protocol can not be used after Windows XP. It was never ported to Windows Vista and its successors. I have no immediate plans to try to get a Warcraft II LAN party going any time soon so this is not time sensitive, but I figured that since GOG is taking the Windows version and repackaging it so that it can be played on modern windows systems. It would be interesting to see how the IPX -> UDP/IP mapping is done because it may be possible to get some vintage Mac -> modern Windows machine warcraft play going.

 

[AphoticD]

I'm sure you've come across this, but a quick search reveals;

Warcraft II - PC​

• TCP: 6112-6119
• UDP: 6112-6119

Are the Mac BNE ports different?

 

[sailingdarter]

I did a port scan on a PowerMac 8600/350 hosting a game I did not find any open ports in the lobby or in Game with an AI player. So I may actually have to get another machine out and do a "mock" game and have Wireshark running on another machine to see what is actually happening.


While it is not unreasonable to assume that the ports are the same I do not know that for sure. When I looked into the history of the Mac port, it looks like the Original (Non Battle Net Edition) port also had TCP/IP LAN play support. That port was done my a third party company (Future Point. -- Fun side story -- Apparently Blizzard was so impressed with the port that they bought the whole company in-house todo the Starcraft Mac Port) But in the Warcraft II BNE Manual TCP/IP LAN play was supported (at the time) only in the Mac version. So while I agree that it is likely that they are the same, I actually want to check and be sure. Luckily I still have a 5 port 10/100 Ethernet HUB (In my box of old crap ) that I can hook a 3rd machine running Wireshark to capture the traffic.

I am just doing this because I just think that the prospect of being able to do classic LAN parties with vintage Macs and play against a modern GOG build of Warcraft II would be pretty awesome


And for those who would ask why I would use a Hub for this rather than a modern Ethernet Switch. Hubs broadcasted all frames they received out the rest of the ports (this was back in the days when switches were very expensive). Switches do not do that and frames are sent only to the destination machine. So keeping an old Hub around for traffic analysis is a good "tool" to keep around.