Networking only works on LAN

kontramani

I have followed this tutorial on the documentation : https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/networking/high_level_multiplayer.html but no matter what i do, my demo only works if i run multiple instances on my pc. I want to get a friend to connect over the internet, I have forwarded the port i am using and added it as an exception on my firewall. I dont know if there is anything else i need to do. If you need anything please ask, thanks in advance

totoro

Is the server on an internet server, or does your place have a fixed ip, also have you allowed the port in the routers firewall (dmz)...?

kontramani

I have a fixed ip and i have allowed the port in both my routers firewall and my pc's one.

cybereality

You might have to setup port forwarding on your router. By default, local PCs are not accessible from the internet unless they have been setup that way.

kontramani

Could you elaborate?I have already forwarded the port on my router, is that what you mean or do i need to take extra steps?

cybereality

You might want to try setting up a simple Python HTTP server on your machine and see if you can access that from the internet. That will let you know if your router is set up correctly or it's a problem with the game. You can do that like this:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Common_questions/set_up_a_local_testing_server

You just need an index.html file in the folder you launch the command line from, even just a basic HTML page that says Hello World would be fine. This will be easier to test that an online game.

TwistedTwigleg

Would the friend need to forward their port too? Since the communication is bidirectional, that might be part of it?

Though testing the port forwarding like Cybereality suggested is probably the best next step.

cybereality

I think most games use NAT (network address translation) which maps the WAN IP/port to a LAN IP/port. However, I've only done some basic networking and not an online game so I don't know how that works in Godot.

kontramani

Well it's been 10 days, sorry for that i had to go away for a few days. I got it to work somehow, though i'm not exactly sure what I changed. The client does not need to forward the port though.The steps I took,though i am not sure all of them are required, are these (in a random order):

Forward the port
Add inbound and outbound exceptions on windows firewall
Added a dmz parameter on my router
I followed the documentation and this tutorial for setting up a server and a client.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful suggestions and good luck to anyone else out there! cheers 🙂