CURIOUS: Source port port-forwarding madness....

[andrewwan1980]

Just curious about the cross-compatibility after I noted down the port numbers a server requires to portforward on his NAT router. I got these port numbers from the server launcher (or forums for Doomsday which I think is outdated because it contradicts the port found in-game).

Doomsday 1337 TCP/UDP http://forums.newdoom.com/showthread.php?t=27578
Doomsday 13209 TCP/UDP In-game Start Server
Odamex 10666 TCP/UDP Odamex Server
Skulltag 10666 TCP/UDP Internet Doom Explorer
Vavoom 26000 TCP/UDP vavoom.txt
ZDaemon 10666 TCP/UDP Server Launcher

Odamex, Skulltag & ZDaemon all share the same port 10666. All 3 were forked/branched off ZDoom 1.22 (Odamex is continuation from csDoom which was off ZDoom 1.22). Does that mean they could actually play against each other? Eg. A Odamex client plays with a Skulltag server. Or a Skulltag client play on a ZDaemon server? Etc, etc. The permutations are endless!

Even if they don't do cross-compatibility, it would be nice that they did under certain conditions. Nice to keep the Doom online internet gaming strong and alive for many years to come (instead of seeing it die off to these over-rated today's FPS games.

PS: And yes, I figured that if one wishes to host a Odamex, Skulltag, ZDaemon servers, then they must use different ports other than 10666.

[Graf Zahl]

andrewwan1980 said:

Does that mean they could actually play against each other? Eg. A Odamex client plays with a Skulltag server. Or a Skulltag client play on a ZDaemon server? Etc, etc. The permutations are endless!

No. Their communication protocol is most likely completely different (can't say for sure due to lack of source release for some of them) and the internal implementation as well. It isn't enough to receive a transmission. The receiving program has to understand it to do something with the data. Just sharing the same port is not enough.

[EarthQuake]

Odamex, Skulltag, and ZDaemon will never intertwine like you imagine.
It's just not going to happen, however nice it might be.

[RTC_Marine]

Amusingly, there is some support for zdaemons 1.06 protocol with Odamex using a special proxy program. But this is more of an official gimmick than anything.

Even though the port numbers are the same, all the protocols are different.

[Gez]

In fact, the netcode isn't even compatible across different version of the same port.

[fraggle]

Good luck getting the ZDaemon team to give a shit.

[EarthQuake]

"Hey ZDaemon development team, can we have the source code to your network code so we can play ZDaemon using Odamex?"

[Vermil]

andrewwan1980 said:
...(or forums for Doomsday which I think is outdated because it contradicts the port found in-game).

Directly from the thread you linked to...

"They are Doomsday console commands and "1337" should be replaced with whatever port you wish to play on."

In short the "1337" in the thread you raed at the Doomsday forum was a place holder, it simply indicates "insert whatever port you are using here".

[CodeImp]

Nice idea andrewwan1980, but if I were you, I'd stay away from trying to unite the different Doom multiplayer communities. Been there, big mistake.

They are separate communities, one more isolated than the other, and they prefer to stay that way. Sharing their source code or their protocol is a risk.

EDIT: Oh and as mentioned above, you would run into technically problems even if they would share the same protocol.