Online with IPX instead of TCP/IP, better?

[MarkEAW]

I was wondering if anyone uses IPX, the home LAN protocoal to play EAW connected via the internet, instead of TCP/IP?
(I was just thinking about the possiability, as GOG-EAW lacks TCP/IP, but does have IPX support with a UDP wrapper included.)

I figure it would work better that the built in TCP/IP as I assume that was tweaked for the old slow Dial-Up use.

The IPX code may work for the faster connections of broadband, but I don't know if with IPX to UDP etc wrappers will slow it's worthyness down?

There are the varaibles in the eaw.ini file, but again, not sure what protocol they are for.......

Anyhow give it a try?

 

[+Erik]

Two different animals. TCP/UDP is built for WAN architecture and IPX/SPX is built for LAN architecture, the prior is for internet connections the later is for local networking. IPX does not perform well in WAN environments and has scalability limitations even if you use a UDP wrapper, which is just the making of kludge supreme sandwich. If you're attempting to get an old code base online for multiplayer, it will likely need a connector setup to DirectX to use its engine which would be the cheapest and easiest way but the entire game would need to be rebuilt to support that. On older code base updating to modernize it into Win10/11 (supported OSs) would be the expensive part. That's usually why platforms without deep pocket support usually sunset. There are rare oddities out there but they are passion works usually supported by a devoted author with tons of time and something to prove. Don't know anything about EAW so can't speak directly on that so make of this what you will.