Game Locator Services
To assist in finding multiplayer games, GameSpy Lite was shipped with the American version of Baldur's Gate and can also be downloaded. GameSpy must be run prior to starting Baldur's Gate. Not discussed are meeting people in IRC chat rooms or use of the ICQ game finder function.
GameSpy is a program that finds active multiplayer Baldur's Gate games on the internet, reporting their addresses and the quality of the connections (ping times). GameSpy Lite is a free version of this software that is customized for Baldur's Gate. The first time you start the program, you must provide a name for yourself, the hard drive directory in which Baldur's Gate is found, and the master GameSpy server for the game, likely master0.gamespy.com. Next, press the Refresh button so that all the currently active servers are listed. Should you create your own game, it may take 5-10 minutes for your server to automatically appear on the list. Unfortunately, it does not tell you when you are correctly listed on the GameSpy server.
By clicking on the Ping column heading, the list of servers can be sorted by their ping values. The fastest servers are indicated by a green circle, with yellow being intermediate and red being slow. By clicking the box to the left of the coloured circle, you can add it to your favourites list. Your favourites list can be observed by depressing the Favourites button. Highlighting a game will reveal the people playing it and information on their characters and the game's settings. To play a game, double-click on one that interests you. This will automatically launch Baldur's Gate and you will find yourself at the Character Arbitration screen. Once the game is started, GameSpy Lite is no longer used. There is no charge for using this connection service.
GameSpy Lite was updated to version 2 on February 3, 1999 and can be downloaded from this page, which also describes the interface. This does not require a previous version so Europeans that did not get a copy with Baldur's Gate can get one now.
There also exists a shareware version of GameSpy that requires a registration fee for use with Baldur's Gate. This one-time fee is $20, covers all future versions of GameSpy and there is no usage fee for finding connections. The registered version provides common support for many other games such as Quake and Unreal (GameSpy Lite only works for Baldur's Gate). The registered version has many more features and can be customized, such as the use of tabs to screens all the games for those running the patched version, that do not have a password and are permitting people to join. Although the layout is a bit different, it provides the same information as GameSpy Lite and games are also started by double-clicking them. If you need help using Gamespy, go here.
The GameSpy server is only sent the information you see on the GameSpy screen and nothing else. No registry information or anything to do with the game's serial number is sent. If you do not want your multiplayer game to appear on the GameSpy listing, edit your BALDUR.INI file as follows:
Under [GameSpy], add the following line "Enabled=0".
Your sessions should never appear on a GameSpy server again. Set "Enabled=1" to re-enable listings on GameSpy.
There is a known problem for some people trying to connect to the GameSpy server as explained by Mark Brockington (Multiplayer Programmer):
Baldur's Gate errs on the
side of caution, because we found that certain
configurations can crash if we attempt to wait
forever for a named IP address to be resolved into
a real IP address (for example, changing an
address like "www.microsoft.com" into a network
address). For most people, this is the most likely
reason why their game does not appear on
GameSpy. What sort of network hardware and
operating system are you using? Does your ISP limit
specific types of traffic by firewall software?
Can you do a "ping master0.gamespy.com" -- what
sort of response time do you get?
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