closer,closer...d'oh!

Curious.

The way I read it, it's saying that your Java interpreter (the JVM) is not allowing the thud applet to connect to the server.

Java applets run in a "virtual machine" or "sandbox", which means the things they can access are very strictly curtailed. They can't access your hard drive or find out information from your system unless you install them as "trusted" applications. You'll probably have seen the "yes I trust these people to install stuff" popup on some other sites, such as the free online virus scanning ones, which need the access to the drive in order to scan it.

An important restriction is that they cannot access any machine other than the one from which they were downloaded. Trying to access any other machine results in a security exception.

It looks like for some reason your browser thinks the applet was being run from somewhere other than our server. I can't think of many reasons this could happen.

1) you've copied it to your machine, and are running it locally - in that case, it will only be able to connect to your machine, and being a "network game" will not be possible for it. Until we're at the stage where we're sticking it on CDs, running locally isn't something I'm willing to support.

2) you're running some strange routing or proxying software. It thinks that the server domain name game.thudguild.com does not map to the IP address 66.197.210.71. You can discover if this is the case (in Windows) by going "start" -> "run" -> "ping game.thudguild.com". If the IP address it lists is 66.197.210.71 then this is probably not the case.

3) There are other domains by which you could refer to the game, but which will not work and will give you this security error - for example, http://www.dewimorgan.com/~thud/game/latest/ will give you this error as the domain name www.dewimorgan.com does not map to that IP address, even though it's the same file. The correct link is: http://game.thudguild.com/latest/

4) Something I've not thought of!

I am at boarding school and I am part of a local network there, so I may not be able to run it but am wondering whether there is any way that I can run it not locally or unistall the applet and make the machine work externally. If not is there any way I can play Thud with others on this site without utilising this application?
Hope this isn't too much of a problem

also is there a way I can download it onto my computer so that I can play slowfire thud?

"Slowfire" thud is played by typing the coordinates in manually to a thread on the forum. There's no user interface for it.

One way to visualise what's happening is using an actual board and moving the pices to the right coordinates. Another is using the "thudboard" program, which you can download and run offline. Information on the latest version can be found here: http://forum.thudgame.com/viewtopic.php?t=47.

As for playing live ThudGame online:

By "local network", do you mean you have no external network access? If you just mean that you're connecting through a proxy, that should be fine - I've played from through myself, and it should work so long as you have port 8080 permitted outgoing.

Given some information about your local network configuration, we might be able to figure a way to get you up and running.

I do have an external connection but I would like to know how I can permit port 8080. What information about my network would you need? If also possible my network does not allow downloads so if you could take the time to send an e-mail with an attachment of the installer to
that would be really kind. Its annoying as I know exactly what it is and what site to get it from but I can't get it!
Thanks

sorry forgot to say of what . installer of the "thud board" to the above address anyone?