Best way to bypass Gamespy

[Legacy_leo_x]

               

I'm biased, but maybe checkout neverrun if you're willing to 3rd party.  It's far more lightweight than starting up the nwn client to check player counts and join games.  You can leave it in the background with near 0 overhead.  The browsing, server description stuff, is so much more pleasant you might find some new servers or ones that you'd meant to try but forgot.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

It sounds to me that your simplest solution would be to just create shortcuts on your desktop to automatically run the game a connect to the servers you want to play.   

 

So if you have three servers that you normally play.   you would create three shortcuts,  one for each server.   That way you would just have to click on the shortcut for the server to jump straight into it. 

 

 

I do not have windows8  but it should work in it.   I will describe the way I create the shortcuts in XP.  

 

Goto your Neverwinter nights directory and find the nwmain.exe file.  

Right click on it and select Create Shortcut.   It should create the shortcut in the same directory.  

Move the shortcut to the desktop.   Drag and drop should work.

Right-click the shortcut and select properties.  

On the general tab  rename the shortcut to reflect the server you want to connect to. 

On the shortcut tab in the target field add the connection information to the end of the field.   

  the connection information consists of "+connect "  followed by the IP and port.  

 

 

Example from my old desk top.

 The tatget field look like.  

 

"C:\NeverwinterNights\NWN\nwmain.exe"   +connect 70.185.174.129:5121

 

Hope that helps. 

 

I would still have to check a list to see what server is active at the time I'd like to play it. But otherwise this would be a great idea.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

Which is better: nwncx or neverrun?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               

Depends. Both offer additional things. E.g the community patch project makes use of some nwncx features for additional bug fixes. Also, there are some camera hacks available with nwncx.

Neverrun on the other hand offers a lot of options to sort your games and servers.

 

Imho, you can run them both, so it isn't even an 'either/or' question.

 

If you do not care about any additional features, it's merely a matter of preference which you like more. Nxncx integrates itself seamlessly, the game looks and behaves nearly the way nwn used to in the old days. Neverrun on the orher hand offes a much more modern interface for browsing modules and servers.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_an ominous cow herd]

               

   

 

In answer to your original question -- Yes, there is a similar solution that works for NWN1.

 

You need the following entries in your hosts file:

0.0.0.0 nwmaster.bioware.com

0.0.0.0 nwn.master.gamespy.com

0.0.0.0 peerchat.gamespy.com

 

Adding those will eliminate that momentary freeze you get when the error dialogs pop up for connecting to the Master Server/Gamespy. Hope that helps!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

 

 

In answer to your original question -- Yes, there is a similar solution that works for NWN1.

 

You need the following entries in your hosts file:

0.0.0.0 nwmaster.bioware.com

0.0.0.0 nwn.master.gamespy.com

0.0.0.0 peerchat.gamespy.com

 

Adding those will eliminate that momentary freeze you get when the error dialogs pop up for connecting to the Master Server/Gamespy. Hope that helps!

 

omg awesome! TY!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               

*nods*

 

Same effect as blocking at the firewall. Refused connections don't wait for a time-out.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

Yep well that did exactly what I wanted. Thanks again Ominous!