Online Play in Windows 7 and 8

[BrianZ111]

A group of us who play WGC and Friday nights are looking at playing some PGA 2000 on Saturday nights, however the hang up is the OS. What is the latest status for playing online with Windows 7 or 8? I know some people were experimenting with alternatives to Kali, what did you guys find? Last night we used Hamachi and also added some IPXWrapper files to the PGA directory (http://www.solemnwarning.net/ipxwrapper/) and were able to successfully play a 2 player game. However when we had 3 people the third person was not able to see any shots and had to leave and reconnect to the game to play his shot. After that he saw shots but the other player who wasn't the host of the game was not able to see/play shots. So it seems for some reason this method is only allowing one person connected to the host of the game to see/play shots. Does anybody know what the problem may be or have any ideas other ideas to try?

[hookster]

Sorry Brian I just saw this post. You can Play online with windows 7 or 8 in Kali providing you download the virtual xp that we use.
And if you do you will need a copy of windows xp. Not one from one of your old systems. Just a regular xp disk that wasn`t assignned to an old comp. I have copies of one if anybody needs one and can tell you where to download virtual xp from. Once installed it is super simple to use. Just a click on an icon and it will open xp on your 7 or 8. Remember though that you will also need to sign up for Kali. Super cheap lifetime membership. If interested gimme a hollar at hookster59@yahoo.com and I will email you all the info for getting started. Hope this helped. Dave

[ShelbyGT]

I have installed and played a local game or two on Windows 10, but I cant seem to play online for some reason?? Any ideas?

[BrianZ111]

The Sierra servers were shut down in 2007 so the only way to play online now is through the IPX protocol. IPX was removed from Windows after XP, meaning currently you need XP or XP in a virtual machine (hookster's solution). However, I have been in contact with the guy who created IPXWrapper (http://www.solemnwarning.net/ipxwrapper/) to add the ability to play over IPX in the newer Windows OS's. For PGA 2000 it works well in two person games as it is and after I contacted him he made some changes (not available publicly yet) and we got a 3 person game going as well. We are hoping to get it so 4 person play is possible to allow team games. Once we have all the bugs worked out and the process nailed down we will hopefully have something for those that don't have XP or want to go through the trouble of installing a virtual XP.

[hookster]

Hey Brian I was just reading over your 1st post about sometimes not seeing somones shot and they you have to leave and come back. I assume you are playing in Kali. We also run into this problem and this is what we found. When everyone is sitting in the room that you have chosen to play in, you have to make sure everyone has a ping on each other or you will not see their shot and visa versa. Once everyone sees the pings you should all be able to hook up no problem. By the way 2 of us are using virtual xp and we can get up to six in a game. Before we hit tee off the setter splits it into groups of 3 so the play is faster. The advantage to this is even if you are in 2 different groups, you will all have the same wind and pin placements etc. Let me know if this helped. Good luck guys.

[BrianZ111]

Thanks, we are currently using Evolve (https://www.evolvehq.com/) because it is free and known to work with IPXWrapper. We've also tried Hamachi but didn't find any difference between it and Evolve as far as how PGA 2000 functions with it. We probably should try it with Kali sometime too as it might make a difference. Hopefully there aren't other dependencies on XP for Kali to work besides needing IPX. We are able to see other shots now with the update the IPXWrapper guy did for us. The issue we've had now is getting games started as people are getting stuck waiting for the game to start. We can usually wait it out with three people and they will get in after a minute or two but so far not with four people in a team game. It can be solved by them leaving and coming back but then the problem is they get different pin locations when they come back. Not sure if they are just never syncing up with the host or what. That's never an issue when someone leaves and comes back in the middle of the round.