I'll be honest--I'm cheap. I don't want to pay to play this game after 30 days are over and I can't expect my friends to either. Therefore, I was wondering if anyone knew an alternative to TCP-Com that would serve the same purpose? any help would be appreciated.

are your friends playing it at your house on a LAN? or is the firewall blocking you at one of your houses? if the rest of the network can survive being cut off for the few hours you play, you could probably directly connect the internet to your computer, and restart it. it should get a new ip

 

if not you could open up the cmd prompt(type 'cmd' in "Run..", in the start menu), then type:

 

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

 

try hosting the game, and having your friend connect to the IP shown on the cmd screen

 

as for me, i'm trying to get it to work on a LAN where both computers are connected by the router and its firewall. trying to search for an answer atm

I'm at a uni with a firewall that I can't configure. The other guys are somewhere in Lousiana. It works great with Hamachi and TCP, so I was hoping there was a freeware version of it somewhere

you lost me a little, what's a 'uni'. describe your setup a little:

 

operating system, and where the firewall is(in a router, on a computer, etc).

 

but if you can't change any settings on the firewall or get anyone to, then you're out of luck unless you find a free version of Hamachi i guess