Drakan.Net has a tip for SoundBlaster Live! owners that are having trouble with Psygnosis/Surreal's just-released Drakan: Order of the Flame to make sure that have the latest Creative's Live(!)Ware 2.1 update. They also have word of problems with that nasty DirectPlay API that are causing difficulties on multiplayer servers when too many players join that should be addressed by a future patch. Here's the word from Stu at Surreal on what's up with Drakan multiplayer (thanks again Drakan.Net):

1. Until the Winsock patch is released, we recommend keeping the max number of players at 4. That seems to be the most players that DirectPlay can handle, no matter how much bandwidth Drakan is using.
2. We recommend setting the server connection speed in the Drakan.cfg file to "Modem56" This is the default speed, and produces pretty good player movement at this rate.
3. Server operators should create a file called "ServerRules.txt" and place it in their Drakan root directory. The file should contain e-mail contact information so Surreal can contact them with problems or solutions. Surreal is monitoring most of the current servers.
4. DirectPlay only allows one server per machine to be run. This is a limitation of DirectPlay, not Drakan, and therefore this issue will be resolved by the Drakan Winsock patch.