Playing Worms Armageddon over the Internet
Worms Armageddon is a great game. Maybe you played in University over LAN and now you want to play it over the Internet. Inside Worms there are two multi player options: LAN and WormNET.
I have no idea what WormNET is, I've never been able to make it work. This guide is going to explain how to play a LAN game over the Internet.
LAN's and Worms
A LAN is a group of computers connected to each other that can talk to each other. LANs are great for gaming and a LAN is required for Worms multi player.
When you have the Internet in between a bunch of computers, the LAN model doesn't work anymore and neither does multi player worms.
So the answer is obvious, make a LAN over the Internet. This can be done through Virtual Private Networking (VPN). VPN is the technology that allows you to create LANs over the Internet.
Playing Worms Armageddon over the Internet
Hamachi is a free VPN service that works really well for gaming because it route's UDP packets, something that not all VPN does, like PPTP. So download and install Hamachi. You can download Hamachi here:
https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp?lang=en
Once you've downloaded, installed, configured Hamachi it creates a additional NIC on your computer. This NIC is going to used in the VPN connection and is going to fool Worms into thinking it is on a LAN -- so you can player LAN games over the Internet.
So in Hamachi you can make password protected groups. These groups are your LAN, you can create a group and send the name and password to your friends and instand LAN, instant worms LAN party.
Multi Homed PC's and old Games
So with Hamachi installed you will have at least two NICs. Some old games don't function right with two NICs installed. They don't know which NIC to use. I think worms is one of these games. I'm not sure, but this will ensure that it will definately work.
Download this program called ForceBindIP. Get the ForceBindIP-1.2-Setup.exe. It can be downloaded here:
http://www.r1ch.net/stuff/forcebindip/
So ForceBindIP makes a program only see one NIC. We are going to use it force worms to only see one NIC.
So create a new Windows shortcut and in the location of the item type the following:
%windir%\system32\forcebindip.exe HAMACHI_IP "C:\MicroProse\Worms Armageddon\wa.exe"
But replace HAMACHI_IP with the IP address you got from Hamachi.
Update Worms
Worms v3.0 crashes for me when using my Hamachi shortcut. You need to get the latest patch to make it work. The latest version of worms is v3.6.29.0 Beta. The patch can be downloaded here:
http://wormsarmageddon.team17.com/main.html?page=supp&area=upda&file=15
Install it.
Worms!!!
Finally, get on Skype, connect up with Hamachi, start worms through the customer shortcut and let the sheep fly!