Basically my question is... Is there a workaround for port forwarding? There must be since some mainstream games dont require the user to forward ports in order to host and get clients connected. It just seems odd to me and I have absolutely no idea how they do it.

Port forwarding is fairly simple (at least to many of us), but there are soooooo many people that have no idea how to do it!

I recently got terraria, forwarded port 7777 to my internal ip and done, server up and im playing with my family and friends. What surprized me was when we wanted to check out other peoples' worlds, most of them have no idea how to forward ports so either their server dosnt work or they require silly workarounds like using hamachi, tunngle, etc...

I must admit many of my friends dont know how to forward ports either and whenever they want to play some old games (like diablo II) usually they ring me up and im the one that has to host for them!

Currently im working on a new 3dgs game and this time I decided im going multiplayer with it (with ANet Pro). So far its looking good but all this got me thinking... What if at some point I think of releasing this time? Port forwarding just started to seem extremely unprofessional to me mainly because of the amount of people that will not be able to host due to the limitations of their own knowledge. I know of many games that dont require port forwarding so there has to be some workaround.

Any ideas?

First of all, there is no workaround for port forwarding if your computer is behind a Router. The reason is simple, you have multiple machines that all share the very same global IP, the one assigned to your Router. If there is an incoming packet, the Router has no idea where to send it and thus drops it. So you have to tell the Router explicitly that you are waiting for data on Port X so it can forward the packets to your machine.
This also works automatically if you are sending a packet to someone, for example a web server. The Router sees that you are sending data on Port X to address Y and stores the request. If it later receives a packet from address Y, it will forward it to your machine.

As you see, port forwarding is part of the whole system and there is no workaround, but, one can setup automatic port forwarding. This is done by either using UPnP or NAT-PMP. NAT-PMP is a protocol specially designed to setup automatic port forwarding but not so common out there because its relatively new and users usually got a Router together with their DSL connection back in 2003.
UPnP is a way older protocol family which can also map ports (together with some other stuff) and the good news is: JulzMighty wrote a nice little dll that allows you to use UPnP easily in your program: http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=360443#Post360443

I thought the same thing, thats what puzzled me. I was confused thinking why on earth I dont have to forward ports when hosting some newer games (like portal2 for example)? It just didnt make any sense to me how the router could "autoMAGICally" know what internal ip to send it to.
I thought they might have made it so the router somehow sends the packets to every computer behind the router or something crazy like that.
I'll take a look at the link and see if that helps explain things, thanks for the info!

That plugin is surprizingly easy to use, only 2 functions and quite straighforward.
I thought I would have to learn alot about how routers work internally and stuff!
Thanks alot!

Just keep in mind that every user will have to install the microsoft visual c++ 2010 redist.
Just supplying the msvcr100.dll file will not work on most computers.

Look at my post in this thread: http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=372918&page=6

Just wait for the new version of ANet

Great news peter!
I prefer having that feature in a plugin I am already using than have to include yet another one.
Anet just gets better and better, i'm quite happy with my purchase and even happier as time goes by. It has grown so much already! Glad I was supporting it from day 1
Any estimated date for the release of this particular feature?
Will it be a free update? (they always are, but it dosnt hurt to ask)

Thanks for the nice words!

Yes upgrades are always for free There is still some work to do (finishing the new lan and internet serverlist template,... ) Additionally I'm on vacation from friday until the next weeks saturday. After that, I'm trying to finish the update as fast as possible because it's already a long time ago since I released the last one.

There are a couple features I havnt tested out yet, like the sever lists and dead reconing, but when im further in development I will look at them for sure.
Have fun on your vacation!

How is that port forwarding update going? (and how was your vacation)