Coding free multiplayer [Looking for help & testers] Zero port forwarding

[livid lake]

I would appreciate help on UI and in-game commands, the network stuff you can leave to me 🙂

Updated January 9th:

I'm coding a way for players to join and host their own servers from their PC, without having to port forward, without risky protocols like UPnP.

The gist of it is, when you connect to a server (ex: hypixel.net), your local wifi temporarily allows hypixel.net to send you data.

Normally your wifi stops all data from coming, unless you connect to a server first.

This is called "hole punching", and it happens every time you use the internet; the tricky part is getting it to work for both the client and the server at the same time.

Both the client and server needs to have holes punched to eachother if they are both behind private wifi networks.

Only then can the client successfully connect to the server.

Thankfully I have found more than one method of doing this.

The video of the demo uses 300 lines and java.net.Socket.

The latest version uses a simple library, where you run a command on both ends, and it creates a reliable connection between the player and client.

Because it simply sends packets as byte arrays from your server to your players, it works for all versions of Minecraft, and has been tested on Beta 1.7.3, 1.20.4, and has support for Bedrock Edition players as well.

Vanilla lan worlds and locally running servers with plugins are both supported.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx4jvZCSlXA

https://github.com/DeflectoMC/Multiplayer-Possible/

[sturdy jasper]

You say this doesn't use port forwarding. How does it then allow two clients on separate networks to connect. Does it use uPnP (which is often not available)? Does it use a external server (which isn't ideal for lag and security)? Could you share some code of how this works?

[livid lake]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx4jvZCSlXA

[livid lake]

Thanks for your questions! I appreciate that you took interest. I've just submitted a video demo of it in the comment above this one.

How does it then allow two clients on separate networks to connect.

TCP simultaneous open. Both the server and the client use a client socket as an intermediary.

Does it use uPnP (which is often not available)?

No! Just vanilla Java Sockets.

Could you share some code of how this works?

I'm going to be publishing the code to GitHub soon, as well as making a video showcasing exactly how it works.

However you're welcome to DM me and I'll send you the source code (not the jar file), so you can read it for yourself.

When I compile it, the jar is only 11 kilobytes, so it's very small and simple.

[spiral pagoda]

this is very interesting

how exactly does it punch through NAT?

[spiral torrent]

The actual part that causes pain

[livid lake]

hahahah xD true... explaining it is hard lol

there's a mid explanation on wikipedia, but it's not for all skill levels and doesn't show how to do it in java:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_hole_punching

you can also ask to see my code btw, I did it in a few hundred lines

I'll be making a video tutorial on it soon 🙂

[peak cosmos]

this is incredibly interesting.
how secure is this?

[livid lake]

more secure than port forwarding

you temporarily allow one person to connect at a time, and not the entire internet.

with some extra code it could be automated

[craggy cloak]

Huh, I expected this to be a jokey request, but this is actually pretty awesome!

Have you considered UDP punching as well?

The majority of multiplayer mods i've worked on used UDP Tunneling w/o proxies to manage without port forwarding permissions

[patent bear]

Wow thats extremly cool o.O

[livid lake]

thanks 🙂

[patent elbow]

There is a different technique for UDP which is called STUN. It is used for example by WebRTC to initialize peer to peer UDP connection.

[patent elbow]

This also may be worth looking at https://github.com/zerotier/libzt

[livid lake]

Do you know if there's any way to get STUN to work on symmetric NATs by chance?

[patent elbow]

If you are really lucky it actually works "by chance". 😄

[livid lake]

lol fair :)

there's also Ice4J and libdatachannel for stun clients

[livid lake]

It's a request for collaborators as I see so much potential (client-sided /friend, /party, /join, voice chats, cross-server /msging, self hosted servers, etc) that I think people should get together and make an open source project around it.

Eventually someone will make an entire alternative for server hosting with this.

I'm okay to do it all on my own, but that'd certainly be a longer route, and I think a lot of people would love to see this happen 🙂

[patent elbow]

Isn't it just easier to use say ZeroTier or... Hamachi ?

Also, there are free tunnels.

[livid lake]

I've heard of pinggy.io, ngrok, and playit.gg as far as free tunnels go

sadly they all have bandwidth limits, and some close after an hour

[patent elbow]

It would be cool to know how many NATs in user networks are immune to hole punching.

For some reason WebRTC has TURN server as fallback when it is unable to connect using STUN.

[chilly shell]

this seems actually extremly cool

[sly parcel]

Once the code is up on GitHub, I'll tackle any issues. 6 years of Java experience, only about 2 weeks of Fabric experience though.

[pastel cargo]

I'm really hoping you are using a standardized security protocol for this. As opening any sort of connection can be pretty dangerous.
I believe Lunar is using webRTC, for the extra security and fallback that it has.

[livid lake]

Are you saying you know specific risks, or are you saying you aren't sure and heard lunar is safer than vanilla?

Because this isn't any more/less safe than the Add Server button in vanilla, and I can prove that to you if we have a chat.

I saw you've used GitHub workflow actions before.

I had a guy the other day tell me he doesn't trust github, can't read code, doesn't know what workflow is, therefor a jar built from a workflow action could be a virus.

I'm sure you'd find that funny to hear, given your experience and understanding of it 🙂

I'm guessing you know the provable security measures of compiling your code in plain sight using a build tool.

I'd love to talk to you about security in DMs though, jfyi this is not my first project that uses this technique, it's my 8th iteration so far.

This one is just the simplest and most beginner friendly for others to understand.

For the other ones, I used tried-and-tested, widely acclaimed encryption algorithms, and I certainly will use secure protocols when I turn this into a mod rather than a runnable jar. I previously used WebRTC in multiple projects.

This is probably not the best place to have a security debate/discussion though, as it might fill up the chat 😅

Are you familiar with cryptographic primitives? Ed25519? RSA? SHA3? Let's talk in DMs.

[sturdy jasper]

Opening any server to the internet has an inherent security risk (there can be vulnerabilities). Server hosters accept those risks. I guess the primary question is: could anyone connect to the shared server (not considering whitelist)?

[livid lake]

The answer is a solid no 🙂

Only your friends you have invited can connect, for as long as you allow them.

It's currently invite-only based connections.

[livid lake]

Here's the source code everyone!

https://github.com/DeflectoMC/Multiplayer-Possible

If anyone would like to help improve and expand upon this project so we can make it something top-notch quality for everyone, I would greatly appreciate the help ❤️

Though you are also fine to re-use it for your own individual projects, as long as you follow the license terms.

[livid lake]

Thank you for your offer 🙂 I've just posted the repo.

[pastel cargo]

I'm talking as a guy who did cyber security for 2 years and has got around a lot of fun custom security protocols.
Every protocol has weaknesses, thats one of the reasons they keep getting updated.
However the more people that look at it and contribute, the safer it is. Which is why I wouldn't use a custom protocol these days.

Current implementation is just a socket, so not much I can say about that

[livid lake]

So you just told everyone that this could be "dangerous" without any specifics as to how, when I've been working for 3 months to get this out to the public intending it to be not for profit?

And now you're saying that you can't comment on the security risks because it's a socket?

Come on. Wait before you deal your damage to other peoples' work dude.

[pastel cargo]

I thought you where going to post a custom networking protocol, not just a socket that passes through well established protocols.

[livid lake]

I thought it was likely the case that you're a security specialist; not an amateur.

But the way you've gone about this towards me just hurts when I've already gotten doubted for months with 0 help and almost 0 interest from anyone else until today

[livid lake]

My previous repository, GameBridge, uses WebRTC Ice4J.

If you call plain old sockets insecure, then so is Minecraft's Add Server button. This is not "dangerous" any more than vanilla is.

In fact, vanilla 1.16+ has an encryption protocol

[pastel cargo]

Didn't mean to come off as negative, it's just that ive seen people do some pretty sketch stuff in the past.

[livid lake]

No worries, all forgiven.

[covert quiver]

Hey ! That’s an amazing idea ! I have always wondered how essential work

[craggy cloak]

@livid lake If you need any UI work

Hit me up

[covert quiver]

I would like to help if needed !

[swift lance]

I'm confused, is this different than e4mc?
I read more messages, this is clearly out of my knowledge realm xd

[chilly shell]

The diff if i understand is this is basically p2p while when using e4mc you go through a proxy

[vapid plaza]

i would love to see this integrated into the minecraft UI. i dont have experience with UI edits (yet) nor the time to learn it, but if no one has done it by the start of february, id love to get into that

kinda busy with school right now

[rough harness]

Would be interesting to use this for a 1.7.10 Essential alternative, since there are none for that version.

[lofty timber]

you still searching?

[lofty timber]

i would gladly try with the permission of deflecto

and if hee xplains it for a dummy like me

[unborn haven]

holy shit

this is crazy

[vapid plaza]

i took a look at the code and it seems the actual hole punching is done by another tool called gole

currently reading the source code of that cause im curious if this can be done in java natively

i mean it probably can, but is it feasible

[sonic crane]

feasible yes

feasible for your time? no

[livid lake]

Like corgi said, it wasn't feasible in time.

The original code was 300 lines of pure Java using TCP hole punching. I learned from some generous testers who dedicated their time that we have to use UDP instead of TCP to get it to work for them. By then it was already public, and a fix had to be made within a few days.

All the nice things TCP does to simplify things for developers don't exist with UDP. You can't simply take Minecraft's TCP packets and translate them to UDP, without tons of work, trial and error, and dedicated testers... unless you use Gole.

As a modmaker, your code can simply run a command, and Gole will handle 100% of the TCP-UDP translations for you magically without any errors. It has over 70+ stars on GitHub like you saw, is several years old and has been thoroughly tested.

As soon as I started using Gole UDP instead of Java TCP, peoples' connectivity issues disappeared entirely. Now almost everyone is able to use this project with success, and it's freed my time so I can focus on making this as user friendly as possible 🙂

[sonic crane]

hey man just a quick opinion:

less whitespace more talk

this project is cool im not doubting any of that i just think your messages could flow better if you condensed them to a point or two

discord users are used to seeing either paragraphs or icons along with text unless theyre in compact mode, best to appeal to the cognitive idea of "this is part of the previous paragraph"

[sonic crane]

whitespacing is nice, you can use replies to fudge some in but it can really break the flow -- im not sure how the rest of you guys feel on this

i just have bad mental wibbly wobblies that i will not get into and it makes it rather difficult to stop myself from skipping past everything, though you can ignore everything i said its ultimately just a subjective style choice?

[fossil horizon]

tldr? (honestly this sounds like an advert....)

[sonic crane]

hole punch mod

LAN over public internet

it is an advert for a mod

[fossil horizon]

i meant this

[sonic crane]

also an advert

[fossil horizon]

this reads like they are trying to sell people on that app

[sonic crane]

i thought its free

[fossil horizon]

everything about it is over the top, hyperbolic...

Everyone, Everything, Now i can enjoy life, etc etc

[sonic crane]

im like 90% sure gole is an open-source library

[fossil horizon]

it is

[sonic crane]

cough redacted cough cough

[fossil horizon]

"sell" as in "convince people that using it is the best thing in the world" as a salesman would

[sonic crane]

i can deal with a bit of funky talk if it means a new nice public library

[fossil horizon]

"in 300 lines of code I [used some other person's app to] do what X Y Z big mods discovered" ... as long as its pure java, sure. i dont want another "i am adding a random executable, but its fine because...security?"

additionally https://github.com/DeflectoMC/Multiplayer-Possible/blob/394019c1b229a755002754448da75612160d02c0/src/multiplayer/possible/Executor.java#L43C25-L43C25 things like that run any random correctly named executable... not good at all. thats literally how botnets are used

[sonic crane]

ouch

its not MIT?

[fossil horizon]

what isnt?

[sonic crane]

the repo

apache license

[sonic crane]

couple red flags but this is the biggest one right? nothing else i can spot

just change this up deflecto

File g = null;
for (File f2 : f.listFiles()) {
    if (f2.getName().startsWith("gole")) {
        if (f2.getName().contains(".zip") || f2.getName().contains(".tar")) {
            gui.info(f2.getName() + " is a compressed file and not the actual program.\nYou'll need to extract it into your Multiplayer-Possible folder");
            if (Desktop.isDesktopSupported() && Desktop.getDesktop().isSupported(Action.OPEN)) {
                Desktop.getDesktop().open(f);
            }
            return;
        }
        f2.setExecutable(true);
        g = f2;
        break;
    }
}

dont do dat

[fossil horizon]

thats the first one

but also, there isnt verification before just running a process on the computer

[sonic crane]

oh it just takes the file and runs it?

[fossil horizon]

yup

[sonic crane]

so feedback would be change to MIT (me) and fix up file shenanigans (you)

summarized

is the gui part necessary?

oh yeah this is just for LAN stuff, nevermind the license works

[fossil horizon]

i mean...it could be completely replaced by a quick python script, or a bash/batch/powershell script

a fun toy for sure but with the sales pitch speak and the concerning code....hard pass

[sonic crane]

in essence its just running gole with some parameters right?

[fossil horizon]

yep

[sonic crane]

if (protocol.equals("udp")) {
  builder.command(g.getAbsolutePath(), "-v", "udp", addr1 + ":" + port1, addr2 + ":" + port2, "-op", mode, "-fwd=127.0.0.1:" + gamePort);
} else {
  builder.command(g.getAbsolutePath(), "-v", "udp", addr1 + ":" + port1, addr2 + ":" + port2, "-op", mode, "-fwd=127.0.0.1:" + gamePort, "-proto=kcp");    
}

i think i have to agree with linguardium this definitely seems like it can be be a bash script, its like 5 or 6 validation steps then running a command with perhaps an extra parameter or two

its just more sus to the casual user this way

even if they can see its like 3 lines i dont trust minecraft players to have the appropriate amount of braincells to be literate

[fossil horizon]

also, not packaging the dependency with it and instead having the user download it puts the user at risk from putting anything else with the proper name in the folder.

[sonic crane]

if you install gole its actually named something else

[fossil horizon]

with a packaged dependency, you can hash before running (even though i still disagree with slapping a gui on top of someone else's hard work and calling it yours...)

[sonic crane]

oh wait nevermind its literally just checking startsWith

[fossil horizon]

well..thats going to be fun to troubleshoot

[sonic crane]

so uh, macos version for TCP

./gole-darwin-amd64 -v tcp 0.0.0.0:3333 4.4.4.4:4444 -op server -fwd=127.0.0.1:8080

wait ill just add the variables

how do i do variables in shellscript again e.e cmere gpt

[fossil horizon]

VARIABLE=thing

echo $VARIABLE

[sonic crane]

oh yeah its the exact same

whatever im just gonna gpt it anyways :>

[fossil horizon]

neat idea, neat program. glad you are helping your community find a solution. I recommend going forward you focus on security and repeatability. package (or index) the releases, identify the computer architecture and from there identify the correct indexed/packaged app. verify hash of app before running (since you cant really sandbox it)

i would also recommend you check for administrative rights and warn the user if they are running as admin/root

[sonic crane]

sorry wait is this wrong?

i thought its between tcp and udp

[fossil horizon]

no, they arent using tcp at all

[sonic crane]

the else is still doing udp though

[fossil horizon]

its doing secure udp basically

[sonic crane]

String protocol = edition.contains("Java") ? "tcp" : "udp";

[fossil horizon]

kcp is basically tcp over udp.

[sonic crane]

ah

yeah thats my bad i still need to get into network protocols

[fossil horizon]

or maybe the other way around? i dunno

[sonic crane]

runs on TCP

nope wait

runs on UDP

[fossil horizon]

yeah, its udp

[sonic crane]

maybe wait for that one cyber security guy

lol

[fossil horizon]

lol, its basically kcp protocol riding udp datagrams

[sonic crane]

java edition / macos

#!/bin/bash

FILE_PATH="/path/to/your/file"
ADDRESS1="your_address"
PORT1="your_port"
ADDRESS2="their_address"
PORT2="their_port"
GAME_PORT="25565"

command="$FILE_PATH -v udp $ADDRESS1:$PORT1 $ADDRESS2:$PORT2 -op server -fwd=127.0.0.1:$GAME_PORT -proto=kcp"

echo "Running: $command"
eval $command

theres still more stuff to be done

i cant be bothered i spent like 10 minutes getting my chatbot (just a finetuned LLM, not "my") to shut up and give me a right answer

kept telling me about fedex

dont ask its a work in progress

[fossil horizon]

lol

[sonic crane]

i think network protocols confused it

because ive been training it on my geodata

so if im at X street and stuff

[fossil horizon]

i dont want to discourage OP, i think there is promise to this if they are actually going to fully support it, but at its current state it puts users at risk and has several expected usability issues

[sonic crane]

alright corgi out

i think this mans life has been successfully ruined for the day, a job well done

i will clarify that this is a joke

my uh.. sense of humour if you can call it that has got me banned from way too many servers

back to being out

[proven wasp]

Chiming in since I definitely do not have the time nor incentive to work on such a thing, and if anyone is interested is having mods automatically be downloaded based on a server(host) modlist check, perhaps a MD5 check for each mod to see which ones have been updated so it can be re-downloaded. This would be a game-changer for tools like Essential, e4mc, World Host. Definitely would need fabric/forge to support it as well since you can't just have the client download all the different mods and have a bunch of mods that are from different servers in the same folder. This could definitely work with symbolic links though, having the server mod that does this symbolic linking the mods into the mod folder when that specific server is being joined etc. Would be a game-changer for sure.

[fossil horizon]

bclib does this already i believe

essential also already has an autoupdater and loads its own classes in separately from its loader mod

https://modrinth.com/mod/automodpack

[proven wasp]

I did not know that, thanks, will have a look.

[proven wasp]

I know about this, and have talked to the guy who made it

but it doesn't automate it for you

you have to set it up in config

would definitely be nice to take it a step further

[fossil horizon]

By default, the modpack will automatically synchronize all mods, configs from default server directories to the modpack. (Check syncedFiles list in /automodpack/automodpack-server.json)

i mean, by default it covers your described use-case

[proven wasp]

Now that you mention it, it does make sense. I was having qualms with it because I wasn't using tools like Essential, but had server and client mods curated, because you know how server mods a lot of times don't work on client and vice versa.

But it does make it a lot easier if you don't have to care about what goes where

[fossil horizon]

To add more mods to your server, place them in the /automodpack/host-modpack/mods/ directory. And so analogically to add shaderpacks, put them in /automodpack/host-modpack/shaderpacks/. You can create any subdirectories you need within /automodpack/host-modpack/ folder.

you can also put your clientmods in here to sync them to clients

it also auto-excludes serverside mods by default

[proven wasp]

Wonder if it will work with Essential and World Host etc, it should but there's a small chance it won't

[lofty timber]

I have just worken up, time to read all of dis

[fossil horizon]

if they proxy route only the server port then it wont, because they cant reach back to you (you arent running a server)

[proven wasp]

Gonna test it and let you know

cheers

[livid lake]

The request was for folks to help with the project, hence the code contributor tag 🙂

I am still the only dev working on it atm.

It's not simply here to promote what's been done so far, but to find anyone who wants to help with it.

[fossil horizon]

ah, i must have missed that. it really did read like a "look at what i did, so amazing!"

[livid lake]

If you don't like Gole, you're welcome to join me btw in slowly trying to get rid of it and replace it with a pure Java solution

[fossil horizon]

i dont mind gole, really, but the implementation is dangerous. (was also about 3/4 done with the message before you deleted)

[livid lake]

(was also about 3/4 done with the message before you deleted)

I'm just not gonna bother, I feel like you guys hate me and corgi told me I can't write a long explanation, but you guys just said a ton of stuff before I had chance to reply.

There's no way I can address everything you guys said without it being too long to read.

If you want to talk to me rn about anything you said earlier, I'll have a friendly dialogue with you, I can't do a mologoue tho

sorry for deleting my long answer

[fossil horizon]

no worries, I wasnt looking for a response. I was voicing my concerns over the initial approach being rather sales pitchy (which corgi explained was just how you talk). I realized after the fact that i was coming across rather harsh, which wasnt my intent, i was just concerned over the approach

[livid lake]

my original idea was to DM devs who knew java and were developing for servers etc, or looking for hire.

then to tell them this idea and its potential, and see if they wanted to do it together

understandably some of them cared about profits or making their own servers big, not helping the broader minecraft community as a whole

I had to do a "sales pitch" as you call it to even just find a few testers tbh...

[fossil horizon]

that sucks, really

[livid lake]

I get your concerns over Gole

it wasn't the original plan

I gave up on hiring testers, as it was so hard, one guy even told me he didn't trust github over spigotmc

[fossil horizon]

gole isnt actually the concern, its how its being implemented into the application

[livid lake]

I rented a Windows desktop PC to test on two wifis if connections would work.

That was the version in pure Java with 300 lines

It worked for me, and the virtual desktop I rented

then I asked people who joined the discord- can we test it?

[livid lake]

I'll be making a version soon that requires a SHA3 hash of the gole files to match before running them.

For now it works, because Gole itself is safe, and as long as a player doesn't put a virus into the folder and rename it Gole, they're totally safe.

[livid lake]

Does that address your concern or was there something else you had in mind?

[livid lake]

If I still end up using Gole in the future, it will auto-download and require a SHA3 hash.

I'll also make my own fork of Gole, and require that GitHub compiles the executable files in a publicly visible way using GitHub Workflow.

If that doesn't eliminate the risk that you're hinting at, I'd love to know what it is so I can fix it 🙂

[fossil horizon]

the way its designed, correct me if I am wrong, the player still has to configure the p2p traffic, right? like they need target other player's WAN ip?

[sonic crane]

what

i just popped in here to check if everything was fine, coincedentally theres a conversation

[livid lake]

yup

[sonic crane]

not what i mean

and not what i said

but i can see where you took that interpretation from

[sonic crane]

yes

it was a recommendation and i was mostly talking about the amount of whitespacing instead of collating some points

[livid lake]

I had to address it to everybody all at once as it was a pretty major change, sorry

[sonic crane]

you can condense that all down to one paragraph and make it a lot easier to read for my brain, but in the end, a recommendation

[livid lake]

oh alright I get it. too many returns 🙂

I'll edit that right now

[livid lake]

btw I picked apache because it's similar to MIT, but requires people who modify it to state changes/say that it's not the original version.

MIT lets people modify it as long as they include the copyright notice, and the original author can't be held liable

[sonic crane]

my problems not with apache its just that its currently a wrapper for a one liner script that uses apache instead of being public domain or MIT

[livid lake]

yeah you're right

I'm adding more features to it, my previous projects in different languages did the same thing + more stuff

[sonic crane]

I feel like you guys hate me
the accusations are false

[fossil horizon]

actually MIT is way more open than that, they can just repackage under a new license even

[sonic crane]

its called tough love

but i still love you

[livid lake]

the first public version, called friendjoin, which is in Node.js, has two commands:

/join <server id>
and
/host which generates a server id

they connect to a third server which exchanges the ips automatically

[sonic crane]

my brain feels like im rotated 90 degrees on the x axis so im gonna dip out

have fun

[livid lake]

the IDs are cryptographically secure

oh alr haha

[livid lake]

have a good one 🙂

[sonic crane]

i think its called pitch

[fossil horizon]

vertigo?

[livid lake]

yaw and pitch probs yeah

feel better!

[sonic crane]

my heads not spinning im just literally 90 degrees fixed

why am i still here, bye for real now

[livid lake]

there's also GameBridge which is in java too

brb gonna help with the dishes haha

back

[fossil horizon]

I was thinking of a method to automate the ip exchange, but pretty much any method will require a third party of some kind so it doesnt really matter.

some mod ideas
user uses a command or button in game that takes a distant end player name and a server id.
server caches response with a timeout
other users that enter that same server id and the first party's name
server sends response to both players indicating that the exchange was successful
player 1 and 2 start attempting connection, once successful or after timeout, player 2 connects to player 1 over established external ip and port

[livid lake]

yeah, folks were concerned about security earlier I think, there's a way of cryptographically signing every message so that the third party can't send the wrong data

[fossil horizon]

since its per-player, the validation piece would be the player name

like, you could in theory spam every possible player's name but..

could pretty easily have the players use their own cloud instance or something, hmm, trying to think of the best easy way to handle it without complicated steps or requiring data collection

like, tools like ngrok already exist

[livid lake]

yeah they do, I know several good ones as well

ngrok, pinggy.io, playit.gg

the thing is they aren't sustainable as free-only options for the company

they have to make money somehow to make up for the costs of receiving all your server's packets and then sending it to your players

[fossil horizon]

right, they have limitations and try to sell you on static ips and such as an incentive to pay them money

no matter what you have to rely on some backend system

[livid lake]

yeah

p2p might be the only long term sustainable option that's for free
I don't really blame the companies for limiting their free plans, it's just a matter of decentralization

Amazing multiplayer mod [Looking for help & testers]

[fossil horizon]

yeah, helper server via an easy cloud deployable dockerfile or nodejs package is probably the easiest way to handle that. each person wanting to host a "server" would deploy the app, then use that url to exchange info with their players

[livid lake]

Coding free multiplayer [Looking for help & testers] Zero port forwarding

just updated the main post! should be better now 🙂

[swift lance]

I know! Use Smart Contracts! That'll solve everything!
||This is a joke, don't sue me||

[livid lake]

lol

[swift lance]

!!xkcd 2260

[hollow anchor]

https://xkcd.com/2260

xkcd: Reaction Maps

If Google Maps stops letting you navigate to (Clay County District) A in West Virginia, you can try Jump, OH -> Ina, IL -> Big Hole, TX.

[fleet falcon]

sounds a lot like https://youtu.be/T9wn1z4FlnA?si=al32CU5_NzrASmfm

[vapid plaza]

yeah it is, hole punching is exactly what is happening here

i actually had some time to quickly throw together java code, but i also only have a single WAN IP available so i cant test it

i was looking at how to find a free proxy and make it forward packets for me, just for testing, but i had to stop cause my exam was coming up 😄

there is one thing of the approach that i dont fully understand. when sending a "reconnaissance" packet to the remote peer, which port do you choose? you have to pick a random guess right?

you can only know the correct port after you receive something from them and it contains their sender address and port

[patent elbow]

No, you choose the port same as external port that was assigned by the NAT of the second client.

[vapid plaza]

but when the first packet is sent, that port isnt known yet, it isnt even assigned yet

that only happens when the second client also sends a reconnaissance packet

[patent elbow]

Second client needs to connect somewhere to get port assigned.

[vapid plaza]

im talking about full p2p approach, without a server to determine outside port

[swift lance]

I mean another idea is just giving the host an "access code" with the port in it. Then they send it via 3rd party discord or whatever to their friends.

[humble stump]

something like STUN is necessary for hole punching afaik

[vapid plaza]

gole, the tool used here, does not use stun or anything similar

[humble stump]

the only case when you can avoid it is when at least a peer can know it’s own public ip:port pair through uPnP or NAT PMP

[patent elbow]

You need to exchange external (public) port somehow.

[vapid plaza]

its the reason im so fascinated with gole, cause using a stun server makes everything easier but requires obv to talk to a server that might not give a fully free service

[swift lance]

I mean if you know someone is opening a mc server, you clearly have some form of communication. Asking the player to send the info through other means isn't unreasonable.

[patent elbow]

Quote from gole readme:

They agreed on a pair of tcp ports to open :3333(A) and :4444(B)

[swift lance]

Also I could be way off here, but can't you take a port and cross your fingers, then try again if it doesn't work? Mc servers in dev open to port 25565 and I've never had a problem with it.

Or is this an IP thing and I'm understanding less than the little I think I am?

[patent elbow]

Yeah, you can use people to exchange ports and other things. You can even encode it into something like base64 and exchange as a single string.

[patent elbow]

The fact that MC servers by default use port 25565 doesn't mean that you will have this port assigned as external port.

[vapid plaza]

if i understand correctly, you are hoping to not have a symmetric NAT, cause it would mean that the following is possible:

• send a packet to a random port on the other clients IP
• keep doing this even though obv they will be stopped by their NAT
• they send a packet back to you
• in some types of NAT, this gets considered as an answer to your requests cause it comes from the same IP

[patent elbow]

keep doing this even though obv they will be stopped by their NAT
One packet should be enough, but if you consider packet loss it may be a good idea.

they send a packet back to you
Yeah, so they get an external port assigned too.

[vapid plaza]

yeah you dont need to, its a matter of timing, iirc gole by default sends one every 120 seconds

[patent elbow]

in some types of NAT, this gets considered as an answer to your requests cause it comes from the same IP
Port must match too.

[vapid plaza]

see thats the part im confused about

youre never gonna see their answer if their external port turns out different than the one you guessed

[patent elbow]

That's why you need to exchange ports.

[vapid plaza]

how does gole do that then

[humble stump]

from a rough dig through its code it just doesn't

[patent elbow]

As I quoted readme of gole earlier, It looks like you need to pass external port of the remote client manually to gole.

They agreed on a pair of tcp ports to open :3333(A) and :4444(B)

[humble stump]

the command line expects you to tell it the peer's ip and port combination, and there doesn't seem to be any "hole punching" done?

also their handshake process exchanges the process pid... for some reason
just going to gloss over that

[vapid plaza]

that would make sense, i thought the ports referred to were internal ports

[patent elbow]

So this library does... nothing? 🥴

If you know external ID and port you can just connect.

[humble stump]

that's the confusing part, yes

[vapid plaza]

that also raises the question how the original demo by deflecto even works at all, cause it does not specify ports

[vapid plaza]

this one

[humble stump]

I guess you get to multiplex multiple connection as a singel one to the kernel?

[patent elbow]

Everything it does is probably proxying connection between local socket and socket used to send data with remote client.

[humble stump]

oh!

the code doesn't actually do a whole hole punching operation

what it does is it just sends a packet to the peer, and prints the current machine's ip:port paiir....

that makes less sense as I said it out loud

[patent elbow]

I saw the old code and if I remember correctly it does pick random port, using the same seed on both clients generated from usernames.

[humble stump]

I think this is the case

[patent elbow]

Then it relies on that the NAT will assign external port to the same port as the internal one.

[vapid plaza]

yeah so it relies on getting lucky with the particular NAT implementation

[patent elbow]

In my opinion yes.

[humble stump]

as a side note, actual holepunching tools that allows custom STUN(-like) services do exist already

one such example is n2n

or tailscale+headscale if you'd like to put in that much effort to set them up

[patent elbow]

There are a lot of implementations. With enough knowledge about networking and NAT implementations you can write your own.

[livid lake]

Hit me up any time if you're in need of a tester.

[livid lake]

good luck on your exams btw!

[south plank]

This is a pretty cool project, how is the testing going? I'm interested since I can't really port forward (ISP is run by clowns) and I'd rather not have to shell out money for a server every time I want to host a playthrough or defer the task to someone else

[vapid plaza]

if someone has time in the next few hours (and is okay with revealing their ip to me lol) lemme know, i want to run deflectos current implementation using gole and see what it does using wireshark

ideally id look at the traffic on my router but isp doesnt give us access to that

i have some ideas i want to test with java code but i need more info first

[lofty timber]

if your up to get into vc with me, sure

[lofty timber]

can be in private or on this dc

just ping me once you read this and are willing to get into a dc, prob wont read otherwise

[vapid plaza]

i have some time now to try it out if youre still available

id rather do it in one of the vcs here

[lofty timber]

well then

les go

[vapid plaza]

gimme a minute

[lofty timber]

no problemo

[lofty timber]

@vapid plaza and myself somehow recreated it

although we did not manage to get his programm to work

we just used gole.exe in the cmd and it worked

we now managed to get his demo to work

[lofty timber]

We are just now trying to wrap our head around how after the first packet, bob knows which port to send to

[lofty timber]

I am writing a quick mod for this

[lofty timber]

i think i cooked this into a mod? i need to try with someone tomorrow

@livid lake if you are interested

Here ya go

[livid lake]

sure!

[lofty timber]

https://github.com/zOnlyKroks/P2P4All

This should theoretically work, you have a tiny button in the main menu where you plug your values in

You then just start your lan world and it should hopefully work

Had no way to test it yet tho

Thinking about this, in today's age there should be a 80% chance a udp hole punch works

[lofty timber]

Can you test it somehow?

[livid lake]

ooh nice, so this is a full on fabric mod?

yeah you did a pretty good job with this 🙂

[livid lake]

yeah I can build it myself

[lofty timber]

Yea

Currently the port to connect to

Just gets thrown into the log

So you gotta grab from there

But I have serious doubts that I nailed this first try

[vapid plaza]

im gonna look into converting the gole call into native java in the next few days

[lofty timber]

The man himself

[lofty timber]

Because currently I just yoink the gole.exe from the GitHub

Or leave it up to the user if they don't trust me

[vapid plaza]

do you do anything to get the users public ip?

[lofty timber]

Yes

It's built in, when you open the mods menu

It displays your own public IP

[vapid plaza]

neat

[lofty timber]

Were three lines of code

So nothing much really

[vapid plaza]

yeah

although its worth considering making that optional

since the goal of the mod is to not need any servers so it will be used by people who woud rather not contact random servers

[lofty timber]

Well I just ping an Amazon server

Which responds to me with my public ip

Which you eventually need to do

Because who in their right mind knows that shit out of their head

[vapid plaza]

i wonder if netty supports stun out of the box, that would be more open

cause i for one hate amazon xd

[lofty timber]

True, I could use another service for that

Was just the first up that crossed my finger

[vapid plaza]

yeah that can be smoothed out later

its just a proof of concept for now

[lofty timber]

There is also this

https://ipv4.icanhazip.com/

Goofy aaaah random website

[vapid plaza]

yeah i use https://v4.ident.me

but stun is probably cleaner since its what its designed for, and it has a protocol and everything

[lofty timber]

Will look into that

Once I know this works

If both nats want it to work💀

If I release this, I know the day will come when a person cries because his nat just said

No

[livid lake]

One of the guys in the discord for this ran a beta 1.7.3 server, and I joined using 1.20.2 and ViaFabric, so it works pretty robustly at the moment 🙂

[lofty timber]

Did ya test the mod already

[livid lake]

think it just finished downloading the minecraft jars, so I'm about to test it right now :D

[lofty timber]

Oh wow

Your Internet seems to kinda suck

[livid lake]

eh it took 2 minutes lol

I think it's just eclipse that takes so long e_e

[lofty timber]

Ah ok fair

Eclipse

When looking at this mod, I do not only punch udp holes, I punch holes into my wall

[livid lake]

nice! I see you added a p2p button in the corner 🙂

one question, should I run this on windows right now or will it work on a Mac too?

looks like you got multiple OS supported, great!

[lofty timber]

Well I do not know if it crashes

It prob will

As GitHub gives me weird ass files when downloading the Mac and Linux artifacts

[livid lake]

if it does I'll do my best to help figure out why

oh oof

[lofty timber]

Just, files without endings

[vapid plaza]

thats normal

executables in unix-like systems have no file extension by convention

[lofty timber]

🥲

I just slapped a .sh and .app at the end of em executables💀

[vapid plaza]

lmao

[lofty timber]

For Linux and Mac respectably

[livid lake]

testing it on two accounts rn

[vapid plaza]

yeah uh you shouldnt do that xd just leave the names

[lofty timber]

If you are on Linux or Mac this shit prob gonna crash

[vapid plaza]

its still gonna work, cause it doesnt depend on the extension, its just... not conventional

[lofty timber]

Ah cool

I guess I will just not go by convention

[vapid plaza]

at least linux ignores file extensions, idk if mac does

[lofty timber]

i would be suprised if this works

and not just instantly crashes

[livid lake]

how do I join the server btw?

gotta open to lan first right?

[lofty timber]

yes

when you open to lan

[livid lake]

anything needed for the port number?

[lofty timber]

it starts gole

[lofty timber]

@vapid plaza what did you put into the port number

[vapid plaza]

wdym

[lofty timber]

when opening to lan

what did you input as the port

[vapid plaza]

depends how you have gole setup

[lofty timber]

did ya just leave it to default

[livid lake]

looks like 25565

[lofty timber]

exactly like the last time

[vapid plaza]

what port does it use to punch and what port does it loopback to

then you probably need 25565

[livid lake]

alright

[lofty timber]

ig just try

and see what happens

[livid lake]

so I've opened the lan world...

[lofty timber]

int port = 40_000 + ( P2PConfig.password.isEmpty() ? 25565 : P2PConfig.password.hashCode() % 20_000);

[livid lake]

would you mind telling me what I do to join as the client?

[lofty timber]

it will be spit into the console on the host, hopefully

for the time beeing

ah fuck

i am dumb as shit

[livid lake]

oof yeah

i found a small but fixable problem

java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/Users/programming/Library/Application Support/minecraft/config/p2p4all/gole/gole-darwin/gole-windows-386.exe": error=2, No such file or directory```

[lofty timber]

one other problem is, well for starters, gole only starts when opening to lang

so we only have hosts

no clients ;/

i may have done an oopsie

lemme fix that

[livid lake]

np bro! this is really cool 🙂 I think it's definitely surpassed Multiplayer-Possible so far

[lofty timber]

did ya open the p2p screen first?

[livid lake]

yes, should I restart?

[lofty timber]

it is not tested that it works yet lol

[lofty timber]

you should not need to

but this happens because i download mac natives

but try to search for the windows intel ones

[livid lake]

oh looks like I might need to change the config

[lofty timber]

ima quickly remake smth

[lofty timber]

you shouldnt need to

[livid lake]

I'll need to for this particular instance

probably not when I do it on windows though

oh yeah that might be a small bug

says gole-darwin/gole-windows-386

[lofty timber]

yep

thats because i did a stoopid

and i now removed the need to start an lan server for the client

[livid lake]

on line 120-122 of GoleDownloader.java:

P2PConfig.goleFilePath = extractedFileFolder.getAbsolutePath() + "/gole-windows-" + (isIntel ? "386.exe" : "amd64.exe");

P2PConfig.isIntelCPU = isIntel;

P2PConfig.write("p2p4all");```

[lofty timber]

once the p2p screen is closed

gole starts

[lofty timber]

ye, think about how to fix that

[livid lake]

working on it right now 🙂

[lofty timber]

ok chief

just send me the patched file

[vapid plaza]

hey theres another slight problem with this

[lofty timber]

and ima push that along my changes

[vapid plaza]

386 doesnt mean intel, and amd64 doesnt mean amd

[livid lake]

do you know if there's a way to check the arch using Oshi btw?

[vapid plaza]

386 means 32 bit x86, and amd64 means 64 bit x86

[lofty timber]

bruh

[livid lake]

guess we could use System.getProperty("os.arch")?

[lofty timber]

private enum OSType {
WINDOWS,LINUX,MAC;
}

i already have this

gole downloader 34, after that its defined

[livid lake]

well regardless, I'm rebooting my game, just change the config, gonna see how well it works 🙂

I'm guessing it'll work fine on my mac after the config change

[lofty timber]

i highly doubt that

there are other things wrong that you havent got to yet

which i am currently fixing

@livid lake pushed fix

should now load correct gole

[livid lake]

that was fast!

[lofty timber]

and it now starts gole, once leaving the p2p screen

maybe it works now

i dunno

config file

needs deletion

[livid lake]

oh I found why it's crashing btw

it throws a RuntimeException in the mixin, if the connection doesn't form within 15 seconds

[lofty timber]

yes

if you pull again

that

and a few other fixes

are already there

[livid lake]

alright cool 🙂 gonna try it 1sec

[lofty timber]

ye

also i maybe should just

let the server close down

and not

kill the whole game

[livid lake]

I can't do it in time XD... rip lol

im too slow :P

the 15000ms just crashes my game before I can connect in time lol

[lofty timber]

well you didnt pull it again

i put 150000

now pushed even more fixse

did you repull it?

from github

[livid lake]

yeah I did, let me double check if it updated yet

[lofty timber]

you will se

if that number has a 0 more to it

[livid lake]

where'd the lan screen mixin go, btw?

[lofty timber]

its gone

[livid lake]

oh alr

[lofty timber]

banished to the shadow realm

[livid lake]

lol

[lofty timber]

because gole now starts

once leaving the p2p screen

otherwies you couldnt be a client

[livid lake]

btw, on the off chance have you worked with private/public keys before?

[lofty timber]

goofy ah encryption programm with gui: https://github.com/zOnlyKroks/OpenEncryptor

shameless plug

[livid lake]

nice!

[lofty timber]

did ya test yet?

[livid lake]

testing again yeah

[lofty timber]

ok

praying to god

even though i do not believe in a god, but for this i need one

atleast on windows, gole tries to connect to somewhere

but fails because he has no parttner

[livid lake]

alright and uh

for the client, do I join on 25565 or?

[lofty timber]

whatever it prints in the console of the client

the console should have a message like dis: System.out.println("Connection established!\n\nWaiting for you to join @ 127.0.0.1:" + gamePort);

with the client, you join that adress

[livid lake]

alright so

looks like I can't run the client and server on the same pc atm lol

as they'd both use 25565

I'm gonna boot up my windows remote desktop

shadoooow pc time!

[lofty timber]

huh

they should not do that

or i think that should not happen

[livid lake]

in my code I make the server run 25565, and the client joins on 35585

since well, it's a little easier to get custom ports going for the client than the server

[lofty timber]

in my code, port 1 and port 2 are

65566
65565

[livid lake]

right... but the forwarded address seems to be 25565 in both cases

[lofty timber]

huh

dafuq

well ig test with a shadow pc

and see what happens

oh fuck

found the error

hol on

@livid lake time for a repull

[vapid plaza]

doesnt that overflow the max port number

[lofty timber]

fixed that issue

it didint complain

fixed

deflecto one last repost

it should now work

[livid lake]

alr 🙂

[lofty timber]

because this is as close to your impl as i can get

i am actually curious

if this will work

prob not tho

[livid lake]

Didn't work for me on 25565 mac + 25565 windows atm...

But this is really close, and these are all probably small bugs that can be easily fixed

Your code overall works remarkably well 🙂

[lofty timber]

did ya pull the code again?

[livid lake]

I recommend testing with the IP address 127.0.0.1 on two alt accounts, same pc, and if you can get it to work on there, it should work soon for everybody else

[livid lake]

alr sure

[lofty timber]

intellij just refuses to do that lol

[livid lake]

oof

[livid lake]

I had used the password "Testing!" instead of blank, so it didn't have 65566 as the port

[lofty timber]

ok

[livid lake]

think it was 29137->29138

[livid lake]

do you know how DSA works?

[lofty timber]

a bit

[livid lake]

I'm making a system which won't require servers to type in players' ips

instead, the player and server connect to a Nexus

they both use DSA to prove their identities to eachother (so a troll can't host a server with the same id)

then all that needs to happen is:

1. server starts
2. server gets a public ID
3. client joins via public ID

my old repository named friendjoin does it if you wanna tear it apart and take a closer look 🙂

I'll be making a repo for a library that lets you do it in Java for any application 🙂 Mostly for this project, but also for anyone else who needs it!

https://github.com/DeflectoMC/friendjoin/blob/main/README.md

oh right now even, this version uses random IDs lol

they get a temporary id the minute they connect to the nexus

that's even easier to do

[lofty timber]

ok well

it seems the hole punching works

but

its refusing any connection

[livid lake]

yeah same for me

[vapid plaza]

so that will require both clients to talk to an external server right?

[lofty timber]

do you have any idea

[livid lake]

yes, here's the Java implementation of how clients and servers used it in GameBridge:

https://github.com/DeflectoMC/GameBridge/tree/main/java/gamebridge/nexus

[lofty timber]

why it refuses a connection for me

[livid lake]

happened for me too

[vapid plaza]

idk i havent looked at any code yet

just vaguely stalking this channel to not get too far behind on the conversation

[lofty timber]

it is essentially the same as his code we managed to get to work

[livid lake]

in latest.log I think it said that the connection was successfully established before Gole actually established the connection

[lofty timber]

but for me refuses to

[lofty timber]

well the connection thingy mabob seems to work tho

[livid lake]

like here it just stopped punching holes and didn't finish, idk why

I gtg but I'll be back in an hour, also will be back at the same time tmr

[lofty timber]

ima sleep then

already the next day for me

[livid lake]

great job on this man! it's really impressive and so close to working just how you intended 🙂

oh lol. good night!

[lofty timber]

ima cry rn

i do not know why this doesnt work

like it says all the things i need it to

https://mclo.gs/JVbwIoD

like, it does smth

my ip is just redacted outa there, all the x.x.x.x are my ip

Or am I blind and mentally challenged at the same time?

It can't be my nat because my nat is predictable

Which four griffins can prove

I am slowly but surely going mentally insane

[lofty timber]

Oh but I think I know why it refuses to work

A it hates me

And B because I am dumb

Gotta fix that later

[swift lance]

And next time on "Lies Developers Tell Themselves While Creating Revolutionary Projects"...

[lofty timber]

well it isnt a lie

[lofty timber]

i just,ignore the most blatant of logic errors

and doubt this is revolutionary

ima leave this picture here, if someone does not know how this works

which intern relies on this

a and b beeing thr clients nat

[lofty timber]

which is backed by this

[lofty timber]

so this mod will be a pain in the ass reliably wise

could also try to implement UPnP, but thats a huge security risk

[lofty timber]

me atm

[lofty timber]

@livid lake @vapid plaza the code currently online works

In the dev env the servers communicate

I cannot completely join as the Mojang servers cry around

But they communicate into the login phase

So this mod works

Just, need to do some polishing and using non blocking io

[lofty timber]

Some more changes, fixes and QOL changes

This is now in a, surprisingly usable state

[lofty timber]

@livid lake I summon you

Test dis

[vapid plaza]

@lofty timber lmk when you have 5 minutes to test something in vc

i have something that may or may not work

[lofty timber]

i do have

[vapid plaza]

i wanna test with your router specifically cause ik it returns connection refused packets

[vapid plaza]

we have done the first successful test of TCP hole punching in pure java

its very fragile, but i now have a working PoC that i can use to make something more advanced

https://tenor.com/view/sacha-baron-cohen-great-success-yay-gif-4185058

[lofty timber]

And i have finished the implementation of the mod

it is tested

it works

i just need to finish some minor details

functionality wise tho, its done

i just need a guinea pig later that has a different nat than me and four griffins

because i know my nat is a nicer one

@vapid plaza you up to test the mod?

[vapid plaza]

in 5 mins

[lofty timber]

ok chief

[lofty timber]

we may or may not

have gotten it to work

[spiral pagoda]

this is quite exciting

[lofty timber]

zero lag

and it works

[spiral pagoda]

right, cause once connected, it’s just a regular tcp connection right?

[lofty timber]

when connecting the first time it just sends a borked error with random html request in it

but second connection attempt works like a charm

[lofty timber]

yes

[spiral pagoda]

amazing

[lofty timber]

shit is three mixins

one is optional

and the other two are only gui shinanigans

currently, only one connection at a time is supported

i just need to move buttons from a menu to another

[swift lance]

So no mixins???

For the actual p2p stuff??

[lofty timber]

nope

not one mixin

that actually touches networking code

[vapid plaza]

the actual networking is currently done with an external tool

im working on a java version that could be implemented as mixins, but its not required to work

[lofty timber]

that completely works without touching mc internals lol

[vapid plaza]

the mod already works

[lofty timber]

which is even more magic

and, atm its 1 player to one player

i am currently reworking it to support x players to 1 player

[swift lance]

That's insane.

[lofty timber]

which should theoretically work

but is not tested

but i know that 1 to 1 works

[swift lance]

So wait, does this mean only the gui is version-dependent?

[lofty timber]

as you saw on the screen

[lofty timber]

yes

[swift lance]

😳

[lofty timber]

nothing else references minecraft

[swift lance]

Well, grats at a new spot at the top of Modrinth. You can claim your prize in a few months.

[lofty timber]

prob not

not many people wanna share their ips with one another

and besides the point, i do not think its that revolutionary or any good because it currently looks like shit

[fleet falcon]

It's your public ip anyways isn't it? No harm in that

[lofty timber]

yes

people are still paranoid

[vapid plaza]

its not terrible, but many people are still afraid of sharing their ip

but its aimed at friends anyway so like, if youre not willing to share your ip to a friend you wouldnt have self hosted anyways

[lofty timber]

and god forbid that i download a .exe i linked the source code too lol

[swift lance]

Ok well this is also assuming people think about it

[vapid plaza]

yeah i think this is currently the largest security hole with it xd

[lofty timber]

which you can manually put there

[swift lance]

Ok that would be more of a problem since it would flag antivirus

Or at least windows smartscreen

[vapid plaza]

thats what the java native implementation will be for 🤷

which has also had successful tests already, i just need to learn how minecraft uses netty

[swift lance]

The tag tells you: to crash games lol

!!netty

[hollow anchor]

If you're getting NoClassDefFoundError: io/netty/util/ResourceLeakDetector$Level when running your project:

1. update to Loom 12 (usually declared in build.gradle)
2. run gradle with --refresh-dependencies

[vapid plaza]

im probably just gonna steal some ideas from e4mc

they are doing a very similar thing after all

[swift lance]

https://tenor.com/view/think-about-it-use-your-brain-use-the-brain-think-brain-gif-7914082

It's not stealing if it's MIT

[vapid plaza]

exactly xd

oh i think e4mc is gpl actually

idk what licenses look like

[lofty timber]

We are also license compatible with gole

And we're MIT so our mod is cool

@swift lance btw you can already compile and test it yourself

If you want to

[vapid plaza]

okay but its not "using a substantial portion of the code" if im just looking what classes to mixin to right xd

[lofty timber]

The current GitHub code is the good one

[lofty timber]

Nah it isnt

It is just inspiration

[vapid plaza]

exactly

[spiral pagoda]

i wonder if you’d be able to abstract this system away

with a friends list esque menu

cause like, if players don’t know they’re sharing their ip, they’re quite unlikely to care

loads of games use p2p connections without people knowing

[vapid plaza]

i was thinking of putting it all through base64 and calling it a "join code" or smth like that

the people who figure out its their ip in base64 are the people who understand its necessary anyway

[lofty timber]

That is

Quite smart

I'ma do thaz

but for that

ima first need to rework all of the gui code

my brain is having a stroke

[spiral pagoda]

genius

[lofty timber]

this mod will be on modrinth

by this monday

hopefully

if i manage to find the time

[spiral pagoda]

i'd be down to help with testing btw

if needed

[lofty timber]

ima come back to that

more nat

more good

[spiral pagoda]

indeed

i think my nat is also quite nice though

so i might not be able to add much

[vapid plaza]

its expected to not work in 4% of cases, and i have some ideas for those as well

but were probably gonna need a lot of testers before we run into that

so probably after it gets published and people start using it

[swift lance]

Firewalls?

[lofty timber]

nah

nats just

rolling the dice when choosing external ports

and not beeing predictable

[swift lance]

Ah

[lofty timber]

basically nats are assholes

[lofty timber]

those do not matter

[vapid plaza]

not to mention hole punching is significantly safer than port forwarding

[lofty timber]

well they do, but java handles that

[vapid plaza]

despite the scary sounding name

[lofty timber]

i am more scary than that

once i punch through the desk

when making guis

the current gui is pretty horrible

but

i will this this this weekend

and make x to 1

possible

[lofty timber]

hmmm

i borked it

borked it again

[lofty timber]

@vapid plaza p2p mod fixed

for every new client

you just gotta put another ID

also done

[vapid plaza]

noice

[lofty timber]

@spiral pagoda you here to do some testin

or @vapid plaza you available?

[spiral pagoda]

im down

hows this work?

[lofty timber]

sure, lets head dev talk

if you wanna talk

atm you need to pull the repo

[vapid plaza]

im coming in a minute

we gotta test groups right

[lofty timber]

ooooo

ye we do

[spiral pagoda]

i'd rather not vc rn

[lofty timber]

unique port shinanigans

[spiral pagoda]

but send me the repo

[lofty timber]

ok, so what you gotta do is

compile

1.20.4 with latest loader and fapi

and wait in the main menu

[spiral pagoda]

alr

[lofty timber]

https://github.com/zOnlyKroks/P2P4All

[vapid plaza]

youre gonna need to move the mod to a non-dev minecraft instance tho

[lofty timber]

because we need an authenthicated dev env

[vapid plaza]

or it complains about auth

[spiral pagoda]

yea i figured as much

[lofty timber]

well technically the request goes to the server

but it says, nooo

[spiral pagoda]

mfw no gradle wrapper

[lofty timber]

i forgor

[spiral pagoda]

luckily intellij is smart

[lofty timber]

smarter than me apperantly

oh it is getting too late, i cant even write properly anymore

[spiral pagoda]

ait im in the main menu

new button i see

[lofty timber]

gimme a sec, ima give you my id once my server is online

[spiral pagoda]

Gole?

huh

[lofty timber]

yes

[spiral pagoda]

whats that for

[lofty timber]

that is what does the hole punching

for us

we are currently working on a pure java impl

this is written in go and shipped in a executable

[spiral pagoda]

ah gotcha

[lofty timber]

once its downloaded a gui opens

you gotta tell me your id

[spiral pagoda]

yup

[lofty timber]

and i gotta tell you mine

[spiral pagoda]

maybe a button to copy the id to clipboard would be good

[lofty timber]

ye, forgor

[spiral pagoda]

here you go lol

[lofty timber]

OTEuMzguMzUuMTc1 is my id

for the lower field you gotta put 1234, we just agree we two use 1234

[spiral pagoda]

oh i see

thats like a password type thing?

[lofty timber]

its just too ensure

[spiral pagoda]

i've activated it

[lofty timber]

we have individual ports

now click proceed

direct connect

ip is in there

[spiral pagoda]

proceed is unclickable rn

[lofty timber]

huh

ig my dev env killed some shit

exit there

we gonna use another id

oh shit

this version is bugged

gimme a sec, i am gonna add a copy button

yes

that what i forgor XD

my brain decided not to brain

[vapid plaza]

also maybe delete this after usage, it does contain someones ip xd

[spiral pagoda]

i mean i suppose

i personally dont care much about leaking my ip

but ill delete if you want

[lofty timber]

i could not be bothered less

if someone has my ip

why tf does java hate me copying to clipboard lol

java.awt.HeadlessException

[spiral pagoda]

poggus

[lofty timber]

@vapid plaza can you test together with @spiral pagoda

have something else to do

new code pushed

[spiral pagoda]

alr let me recompile

my id is OTQuMjEwLjUyLjU4

copy button works 👍

[vapid plaza]

oh oop

im not at my pc rn

[lofty timber]

mine is launching rn

gimme a sec

[vapid plaza]

i can come test in like 10 minutes

[lofty timber]

mine is OTQuMjEwLjUyLjU4

we agree on port 6666

ok my game crashed

why tf

[spiral pagoda]

mine's fine

[lofty timber]

mine is not, prob my jre

[spiral pagoda]

thats uh

the same as mine

[lofty timber]

oh yea

because copy failed

second

OTEuMzguMzUuMTc

this is mine

id 6666

server is waiting for your request

[spiral pagoda]

trying now

not doing much?

[lofty timber]

well shit

why isnt this doing anything

[spiral pagoda]

hm

[lofty timber]

the ips line upn shit

well, why the hell does this work with griffins

we may have found our unreliable nat

[spiral pagoda]

might be worth noting that im behind a doubt nat actually

*double nat

[lofty timber]

[spiral pagoda]

in theory it should punch through that right?

[lofty timber]

oh wait

it says connection established

[spiral pagoda]

wait what

not for me?

[lofty timber]

huh

to whom did i connect and start a server too LOL

[spiral pagoda]

and the log just cleared

did it time out?

[lofty timber]

seems so

let us retry

[spiral pagoda]

its running

[lofty timber]

it broke

prob double nat

[spiral pagoda]

likely

i wonder if you'd be able to work around that

[lofty timber]

i do not know

@vapid plaza when can i summon you?

[patent elbow]

Double NAT shouldn't be a problem, the NAT implementations matter.

Beside that if NAT on first client is unfriendly, but the NAT of the second client is friendly hole punching should be possible.

[lofty timber]

predictable vs non predictable

i know for a fact mine is nice and predictable

[patent elbow]

So it is enough.

[lofty timber]

i wonder why this isnt working

[patent elbow]

But the remote client (not you) must connect first as your external IP and port is predictable.

[lofty timber]

because it worked today

@spiral pagoda wanna ytry again?

[spiral pagoda]

i mean sure

[lofty timber]

port 4444, our ids remain the same

say once you connected

[spiral pagoda]

its running in theory

[vapid plaza]

dont think itll be for today, i got called away

[lofty timber]

ig it hates me now

does not wanna work

gonna need to see tomorrow

gotta sleep

[spiral pagoda]

[lofty timber]

i think this mod tates me

hates

This code works when it wants to

And it is not that time

[patent elbow]

Maybe because you still rely on external port being the same as internal one.

[vapid plaza]

we already found out that kroks router does exactly that, and gole punches in both directions, so it should work

[patent elbow]

That makes things a lot easier.

It should work fine, maybe you have a bug in the implementation.

[lofty timber]

well, it worked today

hm

using my local pc it works

which is expected

[lofty timber]

like two instances

if two people were to try and give me a result of it workes or not i would appreciate it ;D