No promises this will work for you and your computer. You need a good computer AND internet connection to even bother with a listen server.

I probably cannot help you more than this so please don’t send me messages

I’m sure all of you are fed up with matchmaking and waiting, so here’s a thing for anyone who has a good enough computer and internet connection and their own group of 6:

Read the instructions here completely before going to the links!

1. Go to Setting up a listen server and perform steps 1-8.

2. Disconnect from the temporary server you made in step 5 on the link above.

3. Activate console by hitting the ` or ~ button (without holding shift) and type “maxplayers 32” without quotes and hit enter.

4. Type in “sv_password [password]” where [password] is a password of your choosing with NO SPACES.

5. Perform step 9 on the link above. Use this list of maps. Wait for the server to finish loading the map.

6. Do steps 10 and 11. Note that for step 11, since you have a password on the server, people will have to type:

connect [your public ip address]; password [password]

to join your server. Note the ; that is very important.

The following steps are only if you cannot figure out Step 1 of the link above.

P.S. If the “static IP address” program or whatever in step 1 of the link above does not work for you and you have Windows 7, here’s a step by step process to fix that. (I don’t have a Mac, sorry!) Hopefully you can understand this.

NOTE: If your internet cuts out after doing these steps, you’ll want to just go back to “Obtain IP address automatically.” I do not know how to troubleshoot every computer so do this at your own risk.

1. Hit the Windows key, type “run” into the search bar without quotes and click “Run” with what looks like a speedy window thing.

2. Type in “cmd” without quotes and hit enter.

3. Type in “ipconfig /all” without quotes and wait for it to load. Leave this window open.

4. Open “Control Panel”

5. Click “Network and Internet”

6. Click “Network and Sharing Center”

7. Click “Change adapter settings” on the left side bar.

8. Find the name of the router you are using, right click on it, and hit “Properties”

9. Click “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” and hit “Properties” below this area.

10. It should have “Obtain an IP address automatically” selected now. If not, you already have a static IP set up! It’s in the “IP Address:” boxes. Just use this number. Otherwise hit the circle next to “Use the following IP address:”

11. Check that window from earlier (the cmd and ipconfig window). On this you should see “IPv4 ……” It has an IP address of the form 192.168.#.#. You want to type in the first three sets of number into the “IP Address:” box on the window from earlier. The last digit is up to you as long as it doesn’t conflict with your router. I say choose 8 as a safe number. It should now read: “IP Address: 192.168.#.8” where the # is from the other window.

12. Hit the tab key on your keyboard and the “Subnet mask:” area should fill in itself with “255.255.0.0” or something similar. Leave this alone.

13. In the “Default gateway:” area, type in the numbers in the “Default gateway…..” from the cmd and ipconfig window. Should be something like 192.168.#.1 (where # is from the other window. On mine it’s 2. On yours it might be 1! We just don’t know)

14. In “Preferred DNS server:” type in the numbers in the “DNS server….” from the cmd and ipconfig window. Alternate can be left blank.

15. Click “OK.” It may take a second while it switches over and your internet might cut out for a moment. If it cuts out for more than 10 seconds, try to play with the numbers, otherwise switch everything back to “Obtain IP Address automatically” and hit OK to return your internet back to normal (hopefully).

16. If all went well and you’re still on the internet, you should have successfully set up a static IP address for your computer manually! Good job. When port forwarding you want to use the 192.168.#.8 address and hopefully all will go well.