Unable to connect to host

[FrederickLightwood]

I would like to first aplogize if this has been answered elsewhere, but my searching didn't come up with anything relevant to the issue I am having. I am using the latest version of the unofficial patch and would like to be able to bring a friend into a multiplayer server to goof around for a bit (I understand it's a little too shakey to try and go through the story this way.) Below is what I have done so far to attempt to get it running, but I seem to be missing a crucial step somewhere along the line.

1. I have downloaded VTM:B onto a separate machine and installed the patch to said machine.
2. I ensured the game would run perfectly fine by making a character and running around SM for a bit
3. I grabbed the IP of my local host and port forwarded 27005 to 27015 to the local host's address (TCP and UDP)
4. I ran exec multiplayer.cfg then made the host enter noclip and turned gravity off
5. Once I could verify that the host had a server running (Forced and error trying to change maximum players to get the error "cannot change max players while server is running")
6. I went to the client machine and launched the game with the same patch versions and all, then entered "Connect 192.168.0.118" for the local host and received the below error

"Connecting to 192.168.0.118
Retrying
Connection failed after 4 retries"

I am not certain what went wrong, it could very well be a networking issue on my end since the game at least sees that there is a server there. I'm going to try adjusting the firewall settings on both the client and host machines to see if some part of VTMB is not allowed through the firewall, but I am highly doubting that is the case. Thank you in advance for any help you might be able to provide, it goes a very long way to settling my current splitting migraine!

Edit: It is fully functional now, but here is my quick and dirty guide for getting it to run for anyone that stumbles across this in the future

Launch VTMB and install the patch
Once the game is on the home screen open the console and type "Exec multiplayer.cfg" as soon as that responds then type "Map 'Map name here'" my personal preference was sm_hub_1 for testing purposes
If your game has loaded the map and hasn't crashed yet type, noclip to enable noclip. Fly yourself out of bounds to ensure you're out of the way.
Anyone that wishes to connect should type "Connect 'YourIpHere'" it should connect after that assuming you're on a local connection, if not try Evolve for a simulated local connection
Once your players have joined type sv_gravity 800 to restore the gravity and allow people to actually move
For players to select their clan they simply need to type vclans mp-"ClanHere" History is very much the same, but vhistory "History name"

If everything's been followed to the T you should be able to play a very laggy and crash happy version of VTMB with friends!

I will not make any promises, but I am going to poke around to see about editing the game to have spawn points for 2 players and special handling for the presence of another player. If all goes well I may report back with a way to make it much more happy about your soon-to-be partner in crime

[Wesp5]

I will not make any promises, but I am going to poke around to see about editing the game to have spawn points for 2 players and special handling for the presence of another player.

That would be great! I know that several maps crash in multiplayer in the first place and I always dreamt about special maps to maybe attack the Leopold Society together, or defend the Venture Tower against the Sabbat.

[FrederickLightwood]

After spending some hours poring through the back end with the SDK tool and looking at how this game is patched together I have a whole new level of respect for the work that must have gone into VTMBUP (Especially restoring the library mission that was cut before release). Thank you, as of right now it looks like I need to crack open a book on Python, some C++, and get to looking at what can be worked from as a base and what will just need to be reworked from the ground up. If I make any huge advancements, I'll be sure to update, but as of right now I'm going to go silent for a bit to get this worked out.

[Wesp5]

Thank you, as of right now it looks like I need to crack open a book on Python, some C++, and get to looking at what can be worked from as a base and what will just need to be reworked from the ground up.

I wonder if it really would be necessary to do this to get some dedicated MP maps running. In my opinion you would need to learn how to edit the maps themselves in the first place, starting by decompiling some that might be suitable, and then modify them with the Hammer editor to work better forr multiple players. Decompiler and Hammer are part of the SDK...

[FrederickLightwood]

So, to give an idea of a roadmap for what I am wanting to do it goes similar to this:

1. Get multiplayer to not be as jittery (Testing with 128 ticks up and down, 10mb bandwidth, and varying levels of interpolation has so far shown minimal improvement)
2. Set spawnpoints for second player as well as adjust the triggers to be "Closest entity" as opposed to the strict "!Player" to allow the second player to transition between sewers and surface as well as initiate map transitions
3. Improve handling of clients in interactions with NPC (preferrably wrangle their camera along with the host's to the correct position and pass along the audible dialogue somehow)
4. Once all basics of multiplayer are set up, move on to allowing a fully coop campaign as well as some specialized coop maps not featured in the main campaign

Basically I don't want to go through the trouble of making a coop map if it's going to be ungodly jittery, clients aren't able to use their disciplines, and the clients cannot initiate a map change, so my solution is to figure out what's causing the jitter, put a stop to it, then adjust how the game deals with what is and is not a "player" sadly if I were to make it label everyone who joins as a player, anything that targets the player would occur to all players on the map, for instance one person activating a manhole would cause all players to move to the exact same coordinates which though my testing causes a crash if the host is among those teleported. One thing I am wanting to look at though is if the jitter is less on the side of the bandwidth / tick rate, and more on the side of how the CPU is processing these things. I get the feeling that multithreaded rendering could actually be causing more harm than good in this scenario given how the game was originally designed to be run

[Wesp5]

So, to give an idea of a roadmap for what I am wanting to do it goes similar to this:

This sounds like a great plan, I hope you can improve some of the basics then everything would be much easier!

I get the feeling that multithreaded rendering could actually be causing more harm than good in this scenario given how the game was originally designed to be run

Check Dheu's Modding guide, there might be console commands to limit the game to use a single core or similar.