Compiled client won’t connect to local server (Visual Studio 2022, no code changes) /Win64

[ProjectXUniverse]

 

Hi Intersect community,

First of all, a massive thank you for providing such a powerful and well-organized engine entirely for free. I'm truly amazed by what Intersect offers – big shoutout to everyone involved in the project! 🙌

I'm completely new to Intersect and game development in general, but I’ve been diving in with excitement.
I’m currently working on Windows 11 (64-bit) and have installed Visual Studio 2022, Git, Bash, and all required tools. I cloned the source, opened the .sln file in Visual Studio – and everything loaded without errors.

 

✅ What works:

• - The official unmodified client (from GitHub) connects to the local server and works perfectly.
• - My local server runs successfully on my PC.
• - My wife’s laptop (same LAN) can also connect to the server using the unmodified client.
• - Port 5400 (TCP/UDP) is open in both the Windows Defender Firewall and my router.
• - The config.xml in my compiled client points to 127.0.0.1, just like the working version.

 

❌ What doesn’t work:

• - Any client I compile myself (even with zero code changes) won’t connect — the status is always stuck on "Offline".
• - No server logs indicate any connection attempt when using my compiled client.
• - I’ve tried:
•   - Replacing only the .exe
•   - Replacing the full folder
•   - Rechecking the settings

  → Still no success.

 

 

🔧 Build Process:
I used this command to compile the client:
^{dotnet publish -p:Configuration=Release -p:PackageVersion=0.8.0-beta -p:Version=0.8.0 -r win-x64}

The .exe appears here:
^{Intersect.Client\bin\Release\net8.0\win-x64\publish\}

The application launches, but remains offline and never connects to the server.

 

 

 

🧠 My suspicions:
Could this be an issue with:
- Visual Studio 2022 build settings?
- Missing a specific build flag?
- Target framework mismatch?

Even without touching the code, a fresh build results in a client that cannot connect, while the official release client works flawlessly.

 

 

 

💻 My development setup:
- Windows 11 (64-bit)
- Visual Studio 2022 (all required workloads installed)
- Intersect Engine (latest GitHub source)
- Server Client compiled via CMD
- Port 5400 open + forwarded (tested)
- Client config points to 127.0.0.1 also localhost

 

 

I can imagine that for someone experienced, the issue might be immediately obvious – and I might be missing something very basic here.
But I promise that once I understand it, I’ll learn from it and make sure it won’t happen again.
Next time, I’ll even be able to help others with the same problem myself.

If anyone has any suggestions, or can point me in the right direction, I’d be extremely grateful.
Thanks again for this incredible open-source engine and your support! 🙏

 

Kind regards,
ProjectXUniverse
 

[Gibier]

If you want your client to connect to your server you have to compile everything at the same time; client, editor and server 

[ProjectXUniverse]

6 hours ago, Gibier said:

If you want your client to connect to your server you have to compile everything at the same time; client, editor and server 

Thank you so much for the quick response!
I honestly didn’t expect a moderator to personally reply to my post — that really made my day. 😊

I just followed your advice and right-clicked the full solution in Visual Studio to rebuild it entirely.
After that, I navigated into the new output folders and was able to successfully launch both the compiled Server.exe and Client.exe.
The client now shows the server status as Online, so I believe everything is finally compiling and connecting properly. 🎉

However, I had previously assumed I could simply replace the official Client.exe and its 3 main DLL files in the standard release folder (Client and Editor) with my newly compiled files.
But when I try to do that, the Client.exe refuses to launch — no window appears at all.
I thought I had read somewhere that this method might work, but maybe I misunderstood or it's outdated info.

Thanks again for the support — I’m slowly getting the hang of things and learning a lot in the process!

 

EDIT:

 

 

It worked!
I now understand the workflow:

I need to compile the entire solution once, from which I take the Server.exe and Editor.exe.
But from that point on, whenever I make changes to the client code, I can simply run:

• dotnet publish Intersect.Client.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

directly in the Visual Studio 2022 terminal.
This generates only the necessary files – such as Intersect Client.exe and the required MonoGame, SDL2, and soft_oal DLLs – and the client launches successfully with an online server status.

Thanks again for the amazing support! 🙏