I've recently introduced some friends of mine to Dungeon Keeper 2, and so we want to play multiplayer.

Unfortunately, the game is pretty unreliable for multiplayer, and when we tried we met a bunch of crashes and such. The longest we managed to play for was about 30 minutes, at which point we were disconnected from each other for no apparent reason.

Currently, we've been trying via a "LAN" game using Hamachi.

After reading around the internet, I have found some people to say that there are different things to blame (including compatibility settings, game version, which patches are applied, etc.) for the issues, and that it is possible to get a stable enough game to play.

So, does anybody here on GoG have any tips on how we can play this multiplayer?

Hey mate, i bought the game today. And it is possible to play multiplayer with everyone else who has bought GoG version of dungeon keeper 2. So basicly either you use Hamachi which i prefer you don't. Or As i would recommend, Game ranger!

Note:
HOW TO DO THIS

Part1.
Go to your installation folder for dungeon keeper 2, now create an shortcut for your DKII.exe (Only the DKII.exe works as far as i know yet) Right click the shortcut and press Properties. Go to compability and choose Compability mode: Windows XP (Service Pack 2). And inside settings (Still in the Compability tab) you should also mark in Disable Diplay scaling on high DPI settings. Now you can place the shortcut where ever you like but you can't forget where you put it, else you have to do this step again.

Part 2
Google game ranger
Once you've downloaded game ranger and made an account, installed and logged in. Simply do this
Press Edit, Then options. Find Dungeon Keeper 2. Once you've clicked on Dungeon keeper 2 choose Browse, and now important that you choose the shortcut you made! You can place the shortcut where ever you like.

I hope you guys will figure out the rest yourselves. You can also add friends on Game Ranger so you can easily play together feel free to add me '' Tuxion '' is my name there. I will gladly own you haha!

I am also a map editor and i have made some maps in DKII which i will gladly give to you guys on request. Might make a topic later with download link. See you guys and goodluck!

I'm having the same problem as robotgoblin, did tuxion's solution help you or did you find another fix?
Tuxion's solution did not help me as I'm running windows 7 and cant run DKII.exe properly (I need to use DKII-DX.exe to get the game running).

No, that solution didn't work for me - I had the exact same problems. It seems that it doesn't matter whether you use GameRanger or Hamachi, it's the game itself which presents the problems.

I did find, however, that playing on a real LAN (i.e. in the same room or whatever) did help. So the problem may lie in the game dropping connection altogether if it takes too long to communicate.

Also, typing in the text chat in-game seems to cause it to crash quite often - so avoid using that.

Hey there!

What is the problem? Gameranger doesn't open the game after clicking start?

I figured out the problem, and also, the solution.
Problem is, the latest GOG version of DK2 comes with 2 exe files, DKII.exe and DKII-DX.exe.
The correct one is the second one, that is the exe with the HW acceleration patch I suppose, but DKII.exe gives the same fail start attempt as Gameranger. So Gameranger tries to start up the incorrect exe file.

So solution?

Because Gameranger doesn't allow you to pick DKII-DX.exe as the game file for some reason, you have to rename these files. So:

1. Go to the installation folder
2. Rename DKII.exe something, like DKIIabc.exe or DKIIanything.exe
3. Rename DKII-DX.exe to DKII.exe

And if there's nothing else to mess things up, it should work now. Gameranger will start up your game when the host starts it. All you have to do now to create a multy game in game and let others join!

It worked for me! I just had my ass handed to me by a random guy on Gameranger!

I hope this help!