My friend and I want to play modded Minecraft together. We used to use Hamachi when we both had windows machines. Now Hamachi just isn’t working. We can connect and communicate on the LAN we made, but I can’t connect to the direct connection. There aren’t any error messages that help. It just says it couldn’t connect. I have a steamdeck and my friend has a Windows desktop. I’ve done research about it and I am thoroughly lost on what to do. We want to try to do this for free or hella cheap.

Has anyone here encountered this issue and found a workaround or anything?

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    11·
    2 months ago

    Try using Tailscale, it’s an overlay network that acts similar to Hamachi. It’s totally free for up to three users and you can just use your Minecraft Microsoft email to sign up.

    Tailscale

    It works on all platforms and is fast, easy, and secure. And you don’t need to do anything sketchy with your router like opening ports.

  • Toes♀@ani.social
    4·
    2 months ago

    The problem is most likely on the host’s end. They need to configure port forwarding for the game.

    If you’re connecting over the internet confirm you’re connecting to their WAN IP address.

    There is a rare edge case that comes to mind. In server.properties look for use-native-transport and try setting it to false on the host.

    Alternatively I would suggest checking if you and the host support ipv6 and use that. It’ll help avoid the problems you’re experiencing with NAT.

    • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      I’ll have my friend check the server.properties.

      As for port forwarding, my friend has tried to set it up multiple times over the past year for different things and he can’t get it to work. Idk what exactly he’s doing and every time I offer to help, he doesn’t want help even though I work in IT and this shit is part of my job. I’ve offered troubleshooting tips for this whole thing and he hasn’t been receptive.

      • Toes♀@ani.social
        3·
        2 months ago

        Ah yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a double NAT going on and needs to put the ISP provided modem into bridge mode.

        Perhaps change who’s hosting it? Since you’re in IT you probably have a computer capable of it?

        Alternatively you could host a wire guard endpoint have them connect to you that way. But configuring that is a pain on Windows.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
    1·
    2 months ago

    Why are you trying to play over LAN instead of hosting the server and having both users connect?

    If you’re set on playing over LAN you can try zerotier.