I Can't Host!

Well, as stated below in "Internet Problems," I can never seem to host a game of Ares, on either the beta or 1.1.1. Whenever I try, it goes to the window with the "Decline" and "Accept" buttons, but no player ever shows up. When I go back to GameRanger, the other guy says his screen said "Failed to Contact Host." As well, most of my internet games where I JOIN the game go fairly poorly. This happens every time. Aresbugs@ambrosiasw.com hardly ever responds. Is it because I'm behind a firewall? Is there anything I can do? Help!

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--Joolzman5, that guy with the red spikey hair

I have the exact same problem--well, not quite. I'm on a cable modem, but it's being served to me by another in house computer that acts as a firewall and protects our computers from hackers. I'm not sure why this only happens in a few games, mostly bolo, ares, and nobody can join my games either. There's no way--unless you contact your ISP and ask to allow certin data to be transmitted through your firewall.

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"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice."
--Charlie Fulton

Ahem.

Speeking as one who has had the exact same problem, I can offer a solution. Open your firewall software, and make it let through all conections to port 15000. That is used by GameRanger to set up the hosting.

Then allow all conections to whatever port Ares uses on your computer. Manually initiating a host after trying GR will show you what port it defaults to.

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

OK thanks I'll ask my dad to do that.

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--Joolzman5, that guy with the red spikey hair