Joining multiplayer games on Star Wars Battlefront II

Question

A few friends and I installed Star Wars Battlefront II onto our machines via GOG.com.

We tried booting the game and creating a multiplayer game and then joining that way but we didn't see one another's games in the lobby browser section.

We then booted GameRanger, all joined the same room and the host clicked launch. The host gets into the game, however the others are left stranded with a message saying something like Busy, Joining ... then just shows the seconds count.

After about 15/20 seconds it just stops and that's that. No one is able to join one another in a (LAN) game of SWBF2.

AoE2 and UT2004 seem to work via GameRanger or straight up LAN creation within the game, so I'm not sure our network is restricted.

How can we go about debugging/fixing?

Answer 1

The networking side of the game was run through GameSpy which no longer works. Fortunately, some amazing person has made a replacement for SWBF2.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/uz9l5md8lj6et4f/Spy.rar

Download the above and extract. Place all the files in your GameData folder inside the SWBF2 installation folder. E.g.

C:/GOG Games/Star Wars - Battlefront 2/GameData

Boot the newly added .exe and LAN games are now a thing!

Answer 2

In order to be able to play with your friend using the build-in online multiplayer option, try the following:

In the main menu, go to OPTIONS and then ONLINE and activate the setting Search all regions.

This assumes that this setting still exists. It did in the retail version of the game, but may not in the GOG version.

If you still cannot see each other's game, you can try out alternatives for the online multiplayer. Apart from GameRanger there is also the community-made SWBFSpy project. Please read my answer in a related question for an overview of alternative ways to play online multiplayer.