FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Obviously I'm new to this, so for those more experienced Minetest-players: You might want to break out the aspirin.

My sister recently downloaded minetest onto her computer, and I decided it would be cool if I could configure a server for me and her to play together on. The actual starting a server on my computer wasn't hard. (running a command prompt with the --server command) I'm having a problem with port forwarding. I'll be honest: I'm not the most computer savy guy on the block. (Although I know my way around a computer) So, when I read: "forward your chosen port for both TCP and UDP (30000 if you left it default) to the internal IP" it's not foolish to say that I'm very confused.

Could someone people help me? My router is a motorola AT&T UVerse. Thanks!

Are you both using the same router? You don't need to forward if so. You just need to find your LAN address. I'm not sure how to do that on windows (if that's what you're using)

It might be, that the router does not forward the requests automatically as a security feature and one still needs port forwarding to be set up.

You have to read the instructions for your router and search there for port forwarding, or setting up NAT rules. Setting up port forwarding is usually quite easy, but is done slightly different on different hardware. You will have to access the configuration of the router by typing it's IP in the browser, as if accessing a webpage.

Example:
you run the minetest server on the PC with IP 192.168.2.100. So you set up a NAT-rule for your router that is called "minetest-serv". You specify the IP as 192.168.2.100 and the port as 30000 and the protocol as both TCP and UDP (it might be that you have to specify two NAT-rules, one for the TCP protocol and one for the UDP protocol.

If either one of the PCs (the server or your sisters machine) has a firewall, you will have to open port 30000 for both TCP and UDP on each machine that has an active firewall. This step is not needed if both use Ubuntu.

The simplest way in Windoze I find to be:
1. Bring up dos prompt, search "cmd" and at blinking cursor type ipconfig
2. Find the IPv4 address and write it down. (This is typed into your other computer.)
3. Start the server on the machine you just looked up the ip for.
4. Join the server you just created by entering the ip of the server, make sure ports match.
5. Enjoy!

You only need to forward UDP, TCP forwarding is not required currently.

You don't need to port forward if all players are in the same network.