numpty online gaming question

[alltorque]

I'm reasonably new to online gaming - need some advice. If I want to play a couple of mates dotted around the country at HalfLife 2 (deathmatch), can I set up our own game for just 3 of us? Or do we have to play on the preorganised servers on the steam site? Is the only way to do it to have our own server?

If we choose an empty site on Steam, people keep joining in (I know, just not on is it!!) and blasting us to pieces.

Any way of creating our own game?

[dern]

Haven't played half-life 2 but with half-life you could either set up a dedicated server on one of your machines and then everyone connects to that and you could password protect it to make it exclusive. You'll need to know your ip address though.

[ultimasimon]

Yes, you ca download a free copy of the Dedicated Server from Steam. The good points are you can spcify how many people you want and password protect it - the bad points, you need a dedicated PC to run it and a half decent uplink on your broadband.

We found you can get away with an 8 player dedicated server (four each side) on a Pentium 4 2.0Ghz with 512meg ram. It doesn't need a flashy graphics card as its effectivly just an IE server, but a 7200 rpm hard disk helps. A standard BT ADSL 512 'up' connection will do just fine.

If you want to run with more than 16 players you will need to be running a P4 3.0Ghz cpu with at least a gig or ram and find a pipe with 1 meg upwards as a minumum spec.

I have had experience of running 12 players on a 512 up connection and it was ok as long as people don't use voice headsets. Of these, four were LAN players and 8 were WAN.

I still have fond memories of 'fridge wars' with my mates, and it was boxing day last year. Will be hosting another one for boxing day

[UKBob]

dern said:

Haven't played half-life 2 but with half-life you could either set up a dedicated server on one of your machines and then everyone connects to that and you could password protect it to make it exclusive. You'll need to know your ip address though.

The origional (TFC) required just a couple of clicks, give your mates your IP, and they pitched up. You didnt need to download any software, and played on your own machine which acted as a server.