Problem: Dungeon Keeper 2 with the Hardware patch renders you unable to join a multiplayer game. You can host, add npcs, you can even see the host in the list when ports are opened. But once you click join, an hour glass appears and after around thirty seconds the game releases and acts like you never clicked join.

We are able to play and operate dunegon keeper in multiplayer without the hardware patch in soft mode and older versions.

Any solution would be appreciated. playing with 60 FPS in full color vs 15-22 FPS would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to the infinite wisdom of gog (I.E. no help or response) I finally got dungeon keeper to work over the internet with the current hardware patch applied.

This guide uses 2 programs to get multiplayer dungeon keeper 2 to work flawlessly.

Step 1. Install Hamachi and connect to the same Hamachi network. This is free for 5 pcs signed into the same network.

Before you start step 2, make sure you can ping each other in the Hamachi program, You can right click their computer in the list and select ping.
If pinging the computers time out. open command prompt as an administrator, and type ipconfig /flushdns
do this for both computers and reboot. If you still can't ping each other, then I'm unable to help you further.

Step 2. Download IPXWrapper www.solemnwarning.net/ipxwrapper/
as of this post the file name looks like ipxwrapper-0.4.0.zip
Extract the folder somewhere.

Step 3. There are 2 registry files inside. directplay-win32.reg and directplay-win64.reg
Run the 32 or the 64 depending on your operating system.

Step 4. run ipxconfig.exe
Make sure Primary interface is set to Wildcard interface, and highlight
Wildcard interface.
Optional - You can set your Broadcast port to any number, just make sure your other computers match the number as well.
Click apply and OK.

Step 5. In the IPXWrapper folder locate and copy the 4 .DLL files
dpwsockx.dll
ipxwrapper.dll
mswsock.dll
wsock32.dll

Paste these 4 files inside the base directory for Dungeon Keeper 2 (The same place the dk2.exe file is located)

Step 6. Run the game and use IPX for connecting, NOT TCP
If done correctly you will almost INSTANTLY see a hosted game.

Basically, IPX is so much easier for connecting, but computers after windows XP no longer feature this. The IPX wrapper creates the environment needed to connect, and the Hamachi enables an un-firewalled network for fewer complications.

Your thread just saved me days worth of ungodly amounts of troubleshooting. This should be stickied and saved for the future.

Thanks a ton for this, even if you never read this again.

It works with other games that are a disaster to set up as well, this fix applies to project eden, and startopia!

By the gods, you are a hero good sir!

I am still having issues getting this working. My brother and I are both running Windows 7 and we did this. We load dungeon keeper 2 and when we go in to the IPX multiplayer we can see the others game, but it says failed to join... Any ideas?