Ok, so you have downloaded and installed the software and now you are chomping at the bit to start playing. This page serves to help those who want to know how to get games going. It provides some guidance and ideas about how best to find others to play NetAcquire with.
Learning How To Use NetAcquire
Permanent and Regularily-Scheduled Hosting
Communicating To Establish A Game
Private Contacts - Finding Others
Open Communities - The NetAcquire Communities
The NetAcquire software has a comprehensive Help facility that is available by either hitting the F1 key when running it OR selecting the Tutorial function under Help on the NetAcquire window's Menu bar.
This page does NOT teach you how to play the game of Acquire. The rules are also in the software Help Facility. For strategy advice, there are plenty of web locations that provide discussions and advice in this area.
The Help facility has been updated to be HTML-based. However, because NetAcquire has been developed with an older version of Visual Basic, the Help facility uses a converted copy of the HTML-based help. Because it is now HTML-based, all Help facility contents can be viewed on this web site. Note that the contents are viewed without the use of a Table of Contents like the software's Help facility has. Instead, the content has embedded links and most pages have a Related Items section at the bottom to take you to other pages.
This page serves as an addenda to the software's Help facility. It provides expanded commentary about using NetAcquire with advice and information that is more dynamic in nature.
A key thing to remember is that there is no central website that provides a game server for NetAcquire. Many other online gaming programs are available through a website that provides its server as a meeting point. NetAcquire is not designed in that fashion.
NetAcquire is a standalone program that either becomes a temporary server (when you choose to be a game host) or becomes a client (when connecting to a game host). When someone is hosting using NetAcquire, they can choose to do so permanently, semi-permanently (or regularily scheduled), or on a one-time basis.
Version 2 of NetAcquire significantly changes the dynamics necessary to getting games going. Permanent or regularily-scheduled hosts can use website pages to indicate that they are hosting and publish what the IP-address is. NetAcquire users can then connect to these hosts to arrange and play games with others who are also connected at the same time.
To this end, the NetAcquire Players MSN group has an area where regular game hosts can publish their IP/URL information. Refer to the Online Communities page for more information about the MSN group.
The advent of Version 2 with the ability to connect to regular hosts to find games has lessened the need for one-time or adhoc hosts. So this section, while important with Version 1, is not so much now.
In order to get a game of NetAcquire going, one has to communicate the desire to play with others who are online. This communication can be done outside of NetAcquire utilizing any of a broad variety of tools and methods. The most appropriate methods are those that provide for real-time messaging capability.
This communicating of the desire to play can be divided into 2 main categories, "Private Contact" and "Open Community".
"Private Contact" refers to communicating with specific, known people that you wish to play. It is characterized as "probing outwardly" to get a game going.
You will utilize some communication tool to send messages to people asking if they wish to play. The tool used will typically be a real-time messaging facility such as ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, or NetMeeting.
A problem with this method as that it requires constant soliciting and probing of members to get a game going or find out about existing games. This can be alleviated if the communication tool used provides for customized status indicators, such as in Yahoo! Messenger where you can create a custom status that says "Available for NetAcquire" and "Playing NetAcquire".
Another problem is that one has to maintain their contact list (adding new players as they become known). This problem can be alleviated if the communication tool used provides for grouping of users, where someone can join a group and they will automatically have all other members on their contact list.
"Open Community" refers to a communication meeting point that players can go to when they are interested in playing. It is characterized as "converging inwardly" to get a game going.
You will go to some real-time communication meeting place such as a chat room. There you will dialog with those already there to establish a game.
A problem with this method is that one has to sit and wait for other players to come to the chat room. Also, the community needs to be accepted by the NetAcquire playing public as a "standard" congregation point. This can only happen over time and frequency of use.
In order to use this method, you will need to have people on the communication tool's contact/friend list who are NetAcquire players. This is pretty straight forward with people you know, but what about finding new contacts?
One way to address this is by word of mouth. You have someone on your list who has someone on their list that you may not have. They tell you about them and you add them to your list.
Another way is to be able to do searches of user lists using facilities provided with the communication tool. The following are known ways with some of the known communication tools:
ICQ - Profile Interests - One can do a White Pages
search for people who have set their Personal Details profile to include the
word "NetAcquire" under the Games category in the Interests section.
It should be noted that this search capability has a bug.
It sometimes does not find users correctly.
Yahoo! - Profile Keyword - One can do a Member Directory search for
Yahoo! Users using the keyword "NetAcquire".
Yahoo! - Acquire Club Members - The Yahoo! Acquire Club provides the ability to see a list of all members. One can scan this list looking for those who have mentioned in their Comments that they are a NetAcquire player.
And, of course, if you wish others to find you for the same purpose, you need to update your personal profile information so that others' searches will find you.
There are some currently established locations on the web where a NetAcquire player can go to congregate with other players. These are typically Acquire/NetAcquire specific groups and forums that provide chat facilities. To see this list of currently known/established ones, please click on Online Communities.
Note that one community has been created by the developer of NetAcquire and is specifically and exclusively for NetAcquire users. The NetAcquire Players MSN group has a chat room, message board, list of regular game hosts and other useful parts specifically for NetAcquire users.
Should you be concerned about security and hacking with NetAcquire? Absolutely not!
To elaborate, all communication through the port that is opened to the Internet is only processed by NetAcquire. It has its own protocol of commands that it processes. The set of commands in the protocol are strictly related to the game. If someone were to 'spoof' NetAcquire (use another program to behave like it) and try to do something such as read information off your disk, NetAcquire would not even recognize the command. If NetAcquire receives a command it does not recognize, it displays a popup message saying so. So, if this were to actually occur, the game host would immediately know that someone was trying to hack their PC through NetAcquire.
There is a known problem related to the IP Address that NetAcquire shows for game hosts. It only occurs on certain PCs. More specifically, only those that have multiple TCP/IP devices (ie. both a Network card and a modem, or multiple network cards). In this situation, NetAcquire may not report the correct IP address when hosting. When it occurs, people will not be able to connect to the game host because the IP Address they are using is not the correct one.
The problem can be worked around by determining what the correct IP address NetAcquire is using. Then tell the game players the correct one rather than the one NetAcquire is showing. This is done a variety of ways using other PC tools. The simplest known way for any Windows PC is to open a DOS Command Window and enter the command IPCONFIG. IPCONFIG lists all the IP Addresses in use on the PC. Then, using trial and error, one can easily determine which one is the right one being used by NetAcquire.
It seems that when this occurs, it occurs consistently. That is, if it occurs on your PC, it will always occur when you host.
Users of NetAcquire have reported difficulties using it for hosting games from behind a firewall (ie. on a company LAN or a home network with a router). While NetAcquire does not directly address this issue, it has been proven that hosting can be accomplished by appropriately configuring the network.
Users who have successfully managed to do this have emailed Kensit. These emails have been published here directly verbatim. Kensit cannot respond to questions concerning the content of these, they are here purely as an FYI.
A user emailed me with a short description of using a router to host NetAcquire. The following is an extract that describes the general requirements using terms familiar to network types.
"If one is using a router which essentially is always implemented with a firewall using NAT protocol, the router should have a DMZ function. By enabling DMZ host on a particular computer on the network, which you designate the local ip address of, you can host a game of acquire on the machine that is set as DMZ host. Then someone can type in the the global ip address of the host and be able to connect."
One user emailed Kensit with specifics concerning a particular network product. This email can be viewed by clicking here.