I would rather recommend a LAN connection as it is probably going to cause less issues and is also much faster than a serial connection.

Having said that, I remember me and my friends playing Doom 1 & 2 via a serial connection (this was before the days of Windows 95).
Normally, this is only supported between two PC's, but we found a software utility online that allowed us to connect up to 4 PC's at a time. This was quite tricky, since you had to initiate each PC in a specific sequence (as I recall, you started off with the slowest PC).

You require a serial cable (more specifically, a null modem cable) for this purpose - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_cable.
An IDE interface (since your serial ports are "integrated"with the interface) with a 16550 UART is recommended (however, by the time this game was released, this was standard on all PC's of that era).

Haven't been playing so much with a serial connection, but it should have a lower latency than all other types.
I remember making my own null modem cables several times. Was a lot of fun to. 😁 Well, at least for the 3-wire version.
Works fine for up to 20 or 25 metres. Transfer speed can be up to 115200 baud, even with 80s hardware.

I never used a serial cable myself... however, I had a parallel/LPT cable which I mainly used for transferring files between PC's - primarily using XTLINK.
One day I discovered that Windows 9x would allow you to bind IPX/SPX to the parallel cable in the network settings. Doing this, we were able to play Quake, Starcraft etc using IPX/SPX - I remember it was a bit laggy sometimes but certainly no worse than a dialup modem.

In this day and age I wouldn't bother - just get a couple of ISA ethernet NIC's. I only used the parallel cable because I couldn't afford anything better!

DonutKing wrote:

I never used a serial cable myself... however, I had a parallel/LPT cable which I mainly used for transferring files between PC's - primarily using XTLINK.
One day I discovered that Windows 9x would allow you to bind IPX/SPX to the parallel cable in the network settings. Doing this, we were able to play Quake, Starcraft etc using IPX/SPX - I remember it was a bit laggy sometimes but certainly no worse than a dialup modem.

In this day and age I wouldn't bother - just get a couple of ISA ethernet NIC's. I only used the parallel cable because I couldn't afford anything better!

I practically live in the 90's so it won't matter to me either way! 🤣

I'm also the kind of gamer who doesn’t mind low end game settings or watching grainy old VHS for some movies (Though HD is a must for some) But I’ll give both serial and lan a try. I only mentioned serial networking because it was in the list of supported multiplayer hookups in AOE ROR and it looked the least complicated of them all.

I played a bit with null modem cables back in the day. It works very well and cables are very easy to make 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I played a bit with null modem cables back in the day. It works very well and cables are very easy to make 😀

Are they just a plain male to male serial cable?

computergeek92 wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I played a bit with null modem cables back in the day. It works very well and cables are very easy to make 😀

Are they just a plain male to male serial cable?

No, they have crossed cables. Also they're female-female.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_modem

This is what I meant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_modem#/med … dem_cable_1.jpg

That's a null modem cable, but it looks like a plain serial cable to me.

Just look at the pinout. Send connects to receive on the other end. It's really simple 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Just look at the pinout. Send connects to receive on the other end. It's really simple 😀

Would using a plain serial cable instead of the special null modem cable cause damage?

Why would you do that when you know you need a null modem cable? I'm trying to relate to your questions, all of this is readily available information, I'm not sure what the issue is?

computergeek92 wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Just look at the pinout. Send connects to receive on the other end. It's really simple 😀

Would using a plain serial cable instead of the special null modem cable cause damage?

The short and sweet answer is no, but it will also not work.
Refer to the Wikipedia links in my and Phil's posts. It gives you an historical background and it explains why you require a cross over cable if you want to connect two PC's directly to each other.

LapLink cables work a lot better. 😀

I've done this with DOOM; ordered a null modem cable off of Amazon for five dollars (or something). It works great for two-player simple stuff, but I mostly use it for file transfer between computers when there's no more practical way.

Edit: I've also used it for Descent (I and II) and it works just fine there too.

Went from Serial, to Coax to Cat5 over the years, I'm sure many others here have as well.
Serial was mainly in the Dos days and worked fine for 2 player Doom, C&C, Warcraft 1 and 2, DUke3d would go out of sync but think that was due me running it on a 486.

Diablo 1 was the 1st game I came across that allowed more then 2 player serial games. Still on the same 486 so not enjoyable (worse as I was the server being the only one with a PS2 mouse)

I'd say go for it especially if you have an old laptop with no network capability. But if the PC's are already networked it wont offer any benefits