Tell me more ×
Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 37 down vote favorite
7

Since minecraft.net is down or at least badly reachable, is it possible to play multiplayer offline? I know I can log in as one "Player" with the server setting online-mode=false, but the second offline player connecting kicks the first one because of the identical name.

Can this be circumvented?

As Tyr comments, renaming the first connected player (or the second before connecting) would probably do the trick.

share|improve this question
I came in fully expecting to downvote this question because it sounded like sheer nonsense from the title. +1 instead. – StrixVaria Jan 20 '11 at 20:25
@Strix uhm... point taken, thanks :-7 – Zommuter Jan 20 '11 at 20:27
1  
It seems like online-mode=false would get what you want, if you could just set your name in offline mode. I think there is a way, but I don't remember it right now. – Tyr Jan 21 '11 at 5:13
@Tyr yeah that's the setting that allows one player to connect, if you remember how to change the offline name please remember to post it as an answer here... – Zommuter Jan 21 '11 at 5:59
2  
I wonder if there is a way someone could put a transparent proxy in place that caches the response. – Zoredache Feb 26 '11 at 23:10
show 2 more comments

4 Answers

up vote 23 down vote accepted
+50

The way to do this, is to have a server. Have the server set "online-mode" in it's server.properties file to false. Then start the minecraft client without authenticating it.

You can do that via typing this into "run":

java -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -cp "%APPDATA%\.minecraft\bin\*" -Djava.library.path="%APPDATA%\.minecraft\bin\natives" net.minecraft.client.Minecraft "yournamegoeshere"

The only downside of this is that anyone can log in with any name. But the upside is you do not need any third party programs, many of which are illegal.

share|improve this answer
Sweet, thanks for the answer. – davr Mar 1 '11 at 4:43
1  
Sounds great, thanks a lot. I'll test it this weekend and accept your answer if it works :) The "anyone can log in" is not a serious problem since I'm playing on a LAN anyway, and others could use VPN I guess... – Zommuter Mar 1 '11 at 6:06
Does this still work? – Ape-inago Mar 23 '11 at 10:16
1  
I fixed it... there was an another .jar there that it was trying to load from when I was trying to mod the client. My bad. – Ape-inago Mar 24 '11 at 22:43
1  
An oddity when running it this way: the main screen shows a quit button? – Ape-inago Mar 24 '11 at 22:54
show 3 more comments
up vote 5 down vote

A strategy we have used before is to build your own authentication server (the protocol is available) and run that when minecraft.net is down.

You do ofcourse need to have a dabatase with usernames/passwords for this to work, and you would have to place a record in the hosts file whitch will point minecraft.net to the new authentication server.

share|improve this answer
1  
good idea, I didn't know the protocol was available. But isn't this already kind of gray? – Zommuter Jan 26 '11 at 13:19
The way we implemented it, only people who already had an account on minecraft.net, could log in. (We had an ingame verification system which would verify your account to the website account, which was used for the authentication server). – Ikke Jan 26 '11 at 13:32
1  
Is this server available somewhere? I too would like to be able to play on my personal SMP server when minecraft.net goes down (as happens often) – davr Feb 23 '11 at 3:59
@davr No, it's not available, so you would have to build something yourself (or let it be build for you) – Ikke Feb 23 '11 at 7:47
Where is the protocol documented? Minecraft.net or the wiki don't seem to show any documentation on this. – Hugo Jan 19 '12 at 6:36
show 1 more comment
up vote 4 down vote

This used to be possible by placing both online-mode=false and verify-names=false... but it seems with recent updated the verify-names parameter was removed, and all players now come in as 'player'

In the past it would still let you connected to smp with these options and you would have your name as your regular minecraft name. The only way to do this now is to have a minecraft client that is downgraded to an older version and not letting it patch for these times.

If there are only two of you only 1 person would need the downgraded client, however I am not sure of the legality of downgrading his code using the methods easily found online so im going to not provide any links on how to do so.

EDIT: Some extra info verify-names command when it was in the game, checked your minecraft name against the authentication servers to make sure noone else was trying to use your name at the same time and that it was a valid account even after logging in.

share|improve this answer
2  
I'm afraid a downgraded client would also result in being unable to connect to the up-to-date server. Plus I don't have an older one and don't want to enter some gray zone there... – Zommuter Jan 21 '11 at 8:00
yeah that actually would cause some issues with server versions I suppose, I had previously not considered that. But yeah it starts to get a little strange if your not really familiar with the specifics. There was some talk of this feature comming back, or being modded in. With the popular server mod hey0 being closed, there may be some hope of this in the new wrapper, bukkit, but it would involve modding the server and waiting for the mod to be developed if it ever is. – Ward Jan 21 '11 at 8:03
up vote -2 down vote

I'll put it simply: you can't play multiplayer offline.

share|improve this answer
4  
you can - just that the server must set online-mode to false – user8949 Jul 6 '11 at 5:33
maybe I didn't phrase my question well, offline-multiplayer doesn't make much sense in general, what I meant was multiplayer while the minecraft server is down – Zommuter Jul 6 '11 at 9:59
Sure you can, you can have several minecraft copies on the same PC as the server. – Hugo Jan 19 '12 at 6:35

protected by Community♦ Jul 22 '11 at 3:20

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.