Offline LAN issue

IIPlayerPianoII · November 20th, 2008, 10:54 AM

Is it possible to run a L4D LAN over a switch with absolutely no internet connection? All PC's have their own accounts on steam with left 4 dead purchased. I tried to run left 4 dead in offline mode and when I attempt to do anything multiplayer (create a server or search for one) it says I must be signed on to steam to do so. I've searched everywhere and everyone says you can LAN it without an internet connection but no one says how other than a few minor steps that don't pertain to left 4 dead specifically, only other steam fps's. Trying to have an 8 man left 4 dead LAN party this weekend and don't want the whole thing to flop any help would be greatly appreciated.

On a side note, I'm wondering if this idea would work. If we were to say route the internet connection multiple times so that we had 8 ports to work with (only have 4 port routers) just so that we could get that initial internet connection in order to create a game, from there it lets you choose LAN as a server option. Would that automatically detect the fastest setup would be throughout our LAN or would it still attempt to connect through the modem? Because I don't trust a road runner connection supporting 8 pc's all playing L4D at the same time.

Daid · November 20th, 2008, 03:08 PM

The L4D network code is different from other valve games I noticed.

I think it works like this:
-A lobby is created on the steam servers. People can join that one.
-Once you start the game from a lobby it tries to find a server to play on, OR if you have selected that option it will host the game on the lobby owners machine.
-From this moment on the steam connection is only used to notify the other players of where to find the server.
-Players try to connect to the server. If this fails, then the server tries to connect to the player! <- NEW I've never seen other games that do this.

So, if you host a game on your local LAN party, you need internet for the lobby, but if you host the game on one of the players machines then you shouldn't see an impact on the internet connection. Because only the lobby is done trough steam.

(I have no connection with valve in any way, so this information might be wrong and is only based on my own experiance)

Barlowe · November 20th, 2008, 03:20 PM

Moved to problems and errors section.

Hope you find a solution soon

IIPlayerPianoII · November 21st, 2008, 06:36 PM

Well tonight's the LAN and last night we tested the idea and it worked like a charm, we had 4 people on a campaign mode connected through 2 routers (to be sure the multiple router's connected to the modem would work.) All have the internet connection required to enter a lobby (which doesnt eat up much bandwidth providing it's the only online application running on each PC), one person hosts the game and when you have the choice for "search dedicated" or "host LAN", you choose LAN. Afterwards if they are on your friends list it's easy for them to find the game, they join your lobby and you start the game. Starting the game the loading menu takes quite a bit longer than if it were a outside dedicated server(not sure why but it was definitely far longer than ordinary). Once in the game all players had a constant full green bar latency and never had a single latency issue. Success!! I recommend this to anyone that wants to LAN left 4 dead and is worried about bandwidth. I'll repost on monday after we have done this with 8 computers to let everyone know if it went smoothly.

Country · December 25th, 2008, 10:49 PM

I recently Ran Left 4 dead at my LAN party and it was a great success. Any players more than 4 can play as the infected, a boomer, a smoker, hunter, tank, ( dunno about witch yet). It was pretty fun and I accomplished it by these steps.

I went to steampowered.com and got a steam account, (everyone must do this in order for it to work.) Once My steam is up and running I clicked on tools and downloaded the left 4 dead dedicated server. It took some time but it finished with no problems. Then I went and turned my steam to offline mode.

Once starting the server (I had this on another computer with a different steam account), I Ran the game. It immediately recognized my server in the lower left hand corner but it wouldn't connect, said I had to be connected to steam for that. I went to the options tab, went down to keyboard and enabled the developers console. From there i hit the ` key (tilde or whatever, under the esc button) and typed in openserverbrowser hit submit, it recognized my server right there and I could connect with no problems. I had up to 7 people playing, would have been more if people would have done the steam correctly. YOU have to have steam OFFLINE before you disconnect from the interenet. My hall I rent for the LAN has no internet so that was a total buzz kill for me, Eitherway those of us that had it, it was a blast.