Whats the point of having a multiplayer game, if you can only play it by yourself? All our games come with entertaining SOLO modes of play, but still, we hope you can play them with other people. That was our goal while writing them.
If you have an IPX LAN in your basement, you can have friends over for a party. If you have a special friend with a modem, you can dial them directly and play head-to-head. But if you want to play more than 2-way over the phone line, you're going to need some sort of Game Server.
Mplayer.com/HearMe.com
Mplayer is the ultimate place for fast action, multiplayer games on the Internet. It has unparalleled chat and rendevous interfaces, and it supports real-time voice during gameplay. Of course, the fact that my cool day job was as a programmer for Mpath Interactive, (now called HearMe) (the company behind Mplayer) colors my opinion a little bit. Yes, I have a vested interest in getting you onto Mplayer, but I would be an evangelist for Mplayer even if I didn't own stock in the company.
I should point out that you can not currently play any Synthetic Reality games on mplayer.com (that would require a business agreement which does not exist). But because hope springs eternal, I have written mplayer support into most of my games. I hope you don't find this overly confusing. Mplayer.com is still a great place to meet people, play OTHER games, and arrange to play a Synthetic Reality game using my MIX game server. If mplayer.com ever shows an interest in hosting one of my games, I'll be ready :-)
Best of all, an Mplayer account is FREE. (and if you are reading this web page on your Windows 95 computer, then you already have all the internet access you require!)
Playing Via the Internet
Warpath 97 also allows you to use your internet connection to directly play with other players on the internet. Basically, this works the same as modem mode, where one player waits for an incoming call from the other player.
However, in the case of the internet, instead of a phone number, you need to know your friend's IP address. Every computer on the internet has a unique IP address. However, if you normally dial into the internet via an Internet Service Provider, you probably get a temporary IP address assigned to your computer which changes with every connection.
This means you need some other way of telling your friend what your current IP address is. Of course, this is another excellent reason to use Mplayer.
If you want to play over the internet with more than two players, you will need to run a copy of my Mix Game Server (it's FREE).
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