How to play the game Multiplayer

Overview

Commandos 2 is a wonderful, difficult, and very true hearted strategy game where you take command of a multitude of commandos to do dangerous missions in WWII. SInce you play with multiple commandos, playing with multiple people seems like a good idea, and a fun one at that to do, where you each take a small number and work together, like a real team. However, some people seem to have difficulty setting up this multiplayer. So this guide will help try to solve this issue.

Preporatory measures

To start this, you need a few things.

• A copy of Commandos 2: Men of Courage. This is purchesable on steam here
• Hamachi, which you can get here[secure.logmein.com]. Simply download and install. Yes I know there are alternatives, but we only seemed to get it working with hamachi.
• A Windows computer (preferably windows 7). This is for compatibility reasons (works fine on my copy of windows, which is 7), and just for the sake of this guides steps and UI layout.
• At least 128 MB RAM. This is highly recommended
• Friends, or a kidnappee

Firewalls

Unfortunately the game seems to have a nasty habit of using firewalls as defense. This may be caused by any numberable things such as something that is Universal Plug and Play I believe. Lan seems to be the only viable solution now since Gamespy servers are shut down.

First up is your regular firewall, fairly simple, navigate to it in your computers control panel (if you seriously cant find that, why are you even trying to play this game, you will die). Simply click the item I highlighted in the image to the right. It should bring you to another screen.

Once you arrive there, navigate down to the commandos 2 men of courage line, and make sure all boxes are checked, and I do mean ALL boxes. Once done, click ok. We are done with this firewall. See figure to the left for example of what I am referring to.

I dont even know if this plays a factor into whether the game is “blocked” but we set up exceptions in this firewall as well, and it worked, so I will include this as well.

Go into the windows search bar in the start menu and type “advanced” an option for “windows firewall with advanced security” should pop up. See figure to left for referance. Click on this option, and it should bring up a new program.

Something like this picture to the right. Next you will want to click on the button called “New Rule” on the right side of the window. This will open up a new screen. From now on, the images decending on the right side will just illustrate what its supposed to look like, if I dont show a picture of a part of the process, its probably okay to click the continue button. Next you are going to want to make sure program is selected, and click the next button. Next screen will be asking you for the directory in which commandos 2 is installed. By default, the game is installed to the

location, so direct the que to there. Again, see pictures on right side for clarification. If you installed steam elsewhere, you probably know how to find it. I installed mine directly on the C: drive as you can tell by the details in the third image down.
Next up, simply click next on all the next few things, making sure it says allow the connection and on the last screen it shows the following (as shown in picture below).

Simply click through the next few steps and a proper exception for commandos 2 will now be set up!

But you are not done. We also did a similar process for hamachi as well. Simply follow the same steps, except hamachi will be here

And the .exe you are looking to make an exception for is hamachi-2-ui.exe

You can try doing a similar rule system for hamachi in the inbound rules section as well. But again, we cannot confirm that this is a definate fix.

Both players should make the exceptions in their firewalls to minimise the room for error and to help move along the process.

Running Programs

Start up hamachi now, and go under the tabs and get one of your friends from your group of friends (or you) to set up a network. Join their network. Once you are all in the same lobby, then everyone can start up their game officially.
The person who is hosting the game should next go to the multiplayer section, and click on the lan option for running the server. If it asks for an ip, input the hamachi ip. If not, even better! Once you are in, select a mission, and proceed to the next screen, the man select screen. At this point tell your friends to enter the lan lobby system, and refresh till they see your game. If this does not work, then the host should next try going to the internet option in the multiplayer menu, and follow the steps described previously to set up the game. It appears after testing the LAN feature works when people are on the same network, while the internet works while on different networks and using the hamachi IP as the IP to connect to.

If they still cannot see your game, skip to the last section.

Troubleshooting

If all of the above still dont work, here are some general other tips I can give.

• Make more exceptions, the more the merrier I would say.
• You can try port forwarding your ports. When we attempted to get our multiplayer to work, we never isolated variables, so this is a step we still proceeded with nonetheless. It might work. The required ports are 2300-2400 and 47624 on the router with both TCP and UDP protocol
• A computer reset can sometimes do wonders.
• Both sides should also try disabling UPNP. Commandos 2 multiplayer seems to have some issues with it.

If none of the above still works. I dont know what I can do at that point. If it doesnt work, then you can always tell me in the comments about it, and describe your situation. Might help others who have issues.

We have no assurances this will work, but this seemed to work for us.