First steps in online gaming with my family, please help

[bramdo]

Dear all,

now that all of us in the family are growing up...we are starting to play

However, we've all bought half life 2 deathmatch with steam and we would like to create a 'family' server (one of the options in the menu).

Thing is that we've never played online and it's a bit frustrating to get killed all the time

If I, or a cousin, create a server and invite our family members to join it isn't working and most of the time we get 'server is not responding'.

What do we need to do to create a reliable but cheap way to play online on our own server?
Is there a way to play amongst family members alone so that we can exercise for the real world?

thanks
Bram

 

[Canai]

When you create a server, set a password. Then once the server is up, go into console and type "sv_lan 0" and "heartbeat" without the quotes. As long as the ports are open on the router, the game should show up.

Another thing to consider for family fun would be playing either the HL2 campaign coop or a host of other coop maps available with the Synergy mod. http://www.planetdawson.com/synergy/

 

[bramdo]

Hello,

thank you very much for the tips.
Can you please explain me where i can find the console, i'm a beginner
bram

 

[hooflung]

the ~ key should bring up the console

the ports to make sure that are open on the serving computer are :

TCP Ports
27020-27050

UDP Ports
1200,27000-27015

 

[danEboy83]

also if you go into the tools section you can find a HL2 DM dedicated server, if you have a dual core computer , by your profile it looks like you do, you can open up a dedicated server and run your game on the same computer, it helps to assign each instance of the game to a single core of it's own , you do that by pressing ctrl + alt + del, go to the processes tab on top, right click on the hl2.exe and then click on set affinity, there should be 2 cpu's marked, unmark one and then do the same for the dedicated server but unmark the opposite core , hope this makes sense