My friend and I need help getting SS2 to work with multiplayer

[67418d6867bf7jcj64200031]

My penpal (Lloyd) and I have often played online in several different games. We have known each other for almost 2 years now, and we understand each other's computers and who can do what. I am on a wireless router, and I can never host any games since my parents won't let me open ports. Lloyd on the other hand has a firewall, and is allowed to open ports. Whenever we play games, he is always the host, and usually I can connect to him when he has the right ports open.

He has recently convinced me to try SS2, and I love it. However, we would love to be able to play it together. We first tried just having him open the correct ports, and me trying to get in, but it always resulted in a quick failure. We then learned about hamachi, so we both installed it and set up a VPN, then tried again. This time, it took longer than without hamachi, but it still failed.

We thought about it, and started to run some tests. We first tried playing UT2k4. I easily found him in the LAN section with hamachi on, and we did get a succesfull connection (like we do without hamachi). He then tried letting his brother connect to his SS2 game without hamachi on a real LAN with the correct ports open, and his brother couldn't connect to his game. We then pinged each other with hamachi on, and while he could ping me, I couldn't ping him.

Can anyone help us out? it would be greatly appreciated.

[67418d6867e73Kolya]

Hi there jcj64200031, it seems you already read my little SS2 Multiplayer Guide and I'm afraid I can't tell you no more.
But there are some points to consider:
1. The SS2 multplayer code is unfortunately buggy. Sometimes you get a connection - sometimes you don't. Keep trying.
2. Search and post in the  Shock 2 Multiplayer Forum on TTLG too, you might meet people with similar problems there.
3. Check back. It's entirely possible that someone else here is more knowledgable on MP games than I am.