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 Home > Views & Reviews > Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on-line play |
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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3  is
a game I've been eagerly awaiting for the Playstation 2. I loved the
previous versions on the PSone, and the prospect of the same formula coupled with
the vastly superiour graphics on PS2 was, well, Utopia.
The other thing I was really looking forward to was the promise of on-line play in THPS3. This dates back to a trip to see an old school friend of mine who lives in the States. While I was there, we played the first game (which wasn't even released in the U.K at that point) loads. I'd suggested that it would be very cool to be able to play HORSE again some time after I returned to the U.K. THPS3 meant this would be possible... So, on the release date I snagged my copy and headed to work with my PS2. I'd ordered a NetGear USB Ethernet Adapter the previous day, so everything would come together on that Friday morning and I'd be on-line within minutes of arriving at work - where the 'Net connection is reasonably fast and easy to configure. I thought I'd leave getting it working on-line at home with a USB modem for a few days later. "Within minutes" turned out to be not quite accurate... Because there's no T.V at work, I also brought in a WinTV card to stick in a workstation to view the game. I fought with the designated machine to get its sound card and the WinTV card working for some time - but that's another story! "Within hours", I had the PS2 running in the office, THPS3 in the drive  and
the USB Ethernet Adapter connected to the wild-side of our LAN. I
fired it up, headed straight for the Network Game option and configured the game
with the appropriate IP address, gateway, etc. Once that was done, it was time to
join a server and get that first on-line game rolling. I hit the appropriate option
and - WHAM - nothing. The game came up with a "Could not detect any compatible network
devices" message. Bummer.
So, as you do in these situations, I turned to the 'Net for guidance. A few short clicks and well-chosen keywords later, I arrived at the PlanetTonyHawk site;
a fabulous resource for the game - much better than the 'gloss' of the official site.
It soon became apparent that this was doomed to never work. You see, Neversoft (the developers of the game) took the brave decision to implement their own on-line play ahead of the official Sony adapter becoming available. In order to do this, they had to hand-code support for the USB hardware that might be used. If your hardware isn't on their list of supported devices, the game won't be able to detect it or talk to it. This is what I was seeing; the NetGear adapter was not on the official list, therefore the game couldn't see it. FWIW, this is all in the manual that comes with the game, but I thought I hadn't reached the level of desperation where I'd look at that... 
 The PlanetTonyHawk site does in fact list an additional set of USB adapters that will work beyond
those listed in the manual, and those known to not work (which includes the NetGear one - DOH!).
This all works well; it's fast and seems reliable. Having said that, this is using Ethernet on a reasonably fast, digital (128K leased line) connection. With this side of things working, I now have the challenge of getting a USB Modem working at home. This is looking like it may too be an uphill struggle because the list of officially supported USB Modems is proving hard to buy here in the U.K. For example, the specific Zoom model listed has been superseded by the V92 version, and therefore the previous V90 model appears to have been discontinued. The PlanetTonyHawk site again lists additional modems that do/don't work, but I don't have the time or resources to experiment with buying and returning modems at a hundred-odd quid a pop... I'd suggect that maybe e-Bay would be a good place to look, however, few people list the specific model of USB modem they're trying to sell, so that too is time-consuming.
 The
key to getting this working is that my home PC is running Windows XP Home Edition. I'm pretty
sure that Windows 2000 would also work, but haven't tried it. I'll assume it's the same.
With XP/2000 is very easy to set up a 'home LAN', where the machine uses a dial-up connection to the
'Net and allows that connection to be used by any other machine attached to a Local Area Network
(LAN), as shown in the diagram.
XP/2000s Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) will allow any TCP/IP traffic to be 'routed' between the LAN and the 'Net. In previous versions of Windows (notably Windows ME), ICS would only work for Windows machines on the LAN which were running special drivers. Because the new implementation of ICS in XP/2000 works without special drivers, the network traffic for any device (including the PS2) can be routed. Here's how to configure it: Windows XP
Personally, I have a little 4-port hub next to the PC and a dirty-great-long Cat5/RJ45 cable running to the PS2, which I unbundle and run through the house when the urge to play on-line hits me (generally, when the family have all gone to bed). If this were in place permanently, it would be possible to get XP/2000 to 'dial-on-demand' whenever the PS2 tried to establish a connection. However, with an analog modem, I think THPS3 times out trying to connect to the server while the modem is still dialing; you can't set a longer time-out, I think..? |
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