[SOLVED] Direct Connection of Ethernet cables to a Mac and Windows 8 to play games?

[Darogueeskimo]

I have a macbook pro and my friend has a windows 8 desktop and we'd like to play Project Zomboid together at our university. Unfortunately, our university has blocked hamachi ports and we do not know of a way to simply get around that. After doing some research, we thought we could just connect an ethernet cable from one computer into the other and play without using LAN or wifi, but we have been met with a problem or two. He has enabled file sharing on his windows and when I try to connect to server I see his computer, but upon trying to connect it says I need a username and password, which neither of us know what specifically it is asking for. Everywhere I search is giving me the result "Follow the onscreen instructions to type the workgroup name and a user name and password, and choose the shared folder you want to access" but doesn't explain what the username and password should be (Such as the windows computer's log on password, the admin password, or other passwords that we might know about). And to top it all off, even if we did get that to work, we are not sure how we would set up a server and play on that server with a direct connection.

So long story short, is there any way to connect a mac to a windows 8 pc for gaming without the use of a server or network? Also, if you happen have an answer to any of our other conundrums above, that would be extremely helpful as well.

(I apologize for this being so intensive, as well as taking up multiple topics rather than just one.)

 

[the_crippler]

Is the game asking for the username/password or is windows asking for it?

I've never tried LANing with just an ethernet cable between machines, because I wouldn't think that would work...but if the game is prompting you for the user/pass, maybe it would?

The main thing I'd do is just grab a cheap router. If you're LANing, you don't necessarily need an internet connection if the game allows offline play. Set the router up and connect both machines to that.

 

[kanewolf]

You should be able to set a unique static IP address on both machines and use a straight through cable (assuming these are relatively new machines with gigabit networking). This page has instructions for setting static IP addresses. Since you don't have a DNS or anything you will have to use numeric addresses for all setup.

 

[Ijack]

It's asking you for the name and password of a Windows account on the Windows computer. The normal logon name/password should work.