Can I MacGyver this to play SC2 offline?

Waldo783

I just moved into a new apartment and it will be a couple of weeks before I can get an internet connection installed. In the meantime, I have a laptop with a wireless card that can connect to an unsecured wireless network nearby. This network is unreliable at best, certainly not good enough to play online games with, but neither is my laptop as it tends to overheat. Well, it's not going to kill me to lay off the TF2 for a while and I'm not too keen on being a network thief anyway. All I really want at this point is to be able to play the single player missions in SC2 on my desktop PC without an internet connection. There seems to be an issue with offline play in SC2 right now, the workaround I've heard is to login as a guest when the internet connection is enabled in order to use offline mode when it is disabled.

So... is there a way to get an internet connection to my PC, even temporarily, so I can play the games I've purchased? My desktop PC has an ethernet card but no wireless. I also have a D-Link wireless router, ethernet cables, 2 rubberbands, an iPhone and a very large paper clip.

Or should I just go read a book or something? Or maybe I can just play one of the other single-player games I have installed... OH WAIT, STEAM WON'T LET ME WITHOUT AN INTERNET CONNECTION. =C

khain

Can't you play single player steam games in offline mode? I haven't ever tried it, but I would think that there should be someway to have your laptop act as a wireless bridge for the pc, someone else might have more info or you can try google which seems to indicate that it's possible.

Dehumanized

You could probably bridge your wireless adapter to the ethernet adapter on your laptop, then use internet connection sharing and a cat5e crossover cable to get your desktop online long enough to hop into offline mode in steam/sc2.

Zxerol

Did they patch the bug that made SC2's offline mode flat-out not work yet?

Dehumanized

Alternately if your iPhone is jailbroken you could probably tether that...

Arrath

Zxerol wrote: »

Did they patch the bug that made SC2's offline mode flat-out not work yet?

Having just bought SC2, I can say offline mode works maaaybe half the time. And on unstable hotel internet, its frustrating as all hell.

mcdermott

khain wrote: »

Can't you play single player steam games in offline mode? I haven't ever tried it, but I would think that there should be someway to have your laptop act as a wireless bridge for the pc, someone else might have more info or you can try google which seems to indicate that it's possible.

IIRC, you have to be online to take Steam offline. I know I had issues taking it into offline mode when my internet went down for a couple days...never did get it to work, every time I tried to go into offline mode the first thing it wanted to do was log in.

Depending on the model of your router, you may be able to bridge to the ethernet connection. Or, alternately, you may be able to install custom firmware that does this (many routers' stock firmware does not). I use a Linksys with custom firmware to do this at home, with a router at my entertainment center acting as bridge for the three devices (all hooked up wired) that sit there.

If you let us know which model router you have, somebody might be able to tell you if this is at least possible.

Dratatoo

So... is there a way to get an internet connection to my PC, even temporarily, so I can play the games I've purchased? My desktop PC has an ethernet card but no wireless. I also have a D-Link wireless router, ethernet cables, 2 rubberbands, an iPhone and a very large paper clip.

You could use your laptop as base and share the wireless internet connection via ethernet and connect your desktop. (I don't think it will overheat by doing basicallay nothing) If you have newer systems, you should be able to use a regular ethernet cable too (most network cards are able to correct this automatically)

This would be the easiest variant. Otherwise, you could use you iphone and use the tethering option - this way you could login and play SC2 / or switch Steam to offline mode. (maybe tethering is already enabled by your mobile provider, maybe you have to jailbreak you phone if you want to avoid paying the "stupid-tax".)

Frem

mcdermott wrote: »

khain wrote: »

Can't you play single player steam games in offline mode? I haven't ever tried it, but I would think that there should be someway to have your laptop act as a wireless bridge for the pc, someone else might have more info or you can try google which seems to indicate that it's possible.

IIRC, you have to be online to take Steam offline. I know I had issues taking it into offline mode when my internet went down for a couple days...never did get it to work, every time I tried to go into offline mode the first thing it wanted to do was log in.

It depends. I'm pretty sure I've gone directly into offline mode before. All your stuff has to be patched for it to work, and it's finicky. I've had it work, and I've had it fail randomly.