New Netplay Shim for "Vanilla" AoE2

[u/RunDiscombobulated65]

Hi y'all. I'm working on a DirectPlay shim to restore Netplay to a Vanilla(-ish) Age of Empires 2 Conquerors installation.

For context, I put this together a while back:

https://archive.org/details/aoe-2-con

This pack is a simple of a "click the button and the game just works" version of the classic experience as I could manage, using CnC-Ddraw and Userpatch to get the original executables playing nice with Windows 10/11.

However, the multiplayer functionality while possible with IPX wrappers or VPNs was less than ideal.

I'm developing a DirectPlay shim, based on Wine's DirectPlay replacement code, to interface with AoE2. The idea is that it sends the initial connection handshakes to a web-hosted PHP server, which the DirectPlay replacement then takes over and handles connections peer to peer.

It's probably a little early to share, but I'm hosting it here:

www.oldkid.net/aoe2net

it currently supports Windows 10/11 and works with AoE2-C's Userpatch, but I'm working on a version that will work with vanilla Windows 9x operating systems and unpatched copies of the game.

The only notible new feature is a lobby password system that is handled entirely from the DirectPlay shim, so you have the option to have a web hosted game that isn't open to the entire Internet.

The hope is to keep things as simple as possible and not reinvent the wheel (I know there are better ways to play this game online with HD, Voobly, DE, etc) but to just give just enough modernity to the old classic game to stay online for LAN and Internet games.

Open to ideas, suggestions, etc. Thanks for hearing out my ramble!