GameRanger Vs. Tungle Vs. Evolve: Any Opinions?

Games
1

Hey folks, how are ya? I’m posting this because I’m looking for some advice. We play a lot of older space games for my blog, such as X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Sword of the Stars and so on, and getting these to work isn’t always the easiest. We typically use GameRanger, which is great when it works but it doesn’t always work consistently. We’ve used services like Hamachi for LAN emulation to play Sword of the Stars, but that’s just a pain.

So I’ve been looking into alternatives. I found Tunngle via searching for how folks play SWAT 4 multiplayer, and it looks like a pretty nice service. It looks as if, when everyone is in the same room, they can just play whatever game using the LAN emulation via an IP address, which sounds very appealing and would work with any game that uses LAN, so they say. Most of the games we try to play have LAN support, so this would be a boon. I’m also considering this one because a lifetime pass is affordable right now.

My podcast cohost, however, is all about Evolve, so I’ve tried it once or twice, and it seems okay, similar to Tunngle in a lot of ways but at the same time not as…good? Feature-filled? Something like that. It’s as affordable as Tunngle for the lifetime thingy, but I’m not sold on it yet.

Based on what I’ve seen and read, I kinda wanna invest in Tunngle so we can use it as something of a permanent, consistent way to play older, non-Steamworks multiplayer games.

That said, I don’t have extensive experience with either Tunngle or Evolve. We’ve used GameRanger extensively for X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but that seems to be the only game we’ve used that consistently works on the service.

So I was wondering if any of y’all have any opinions on these services based on your usage of them that you wouldn’t mind sharing. :)

Thanks!

2

Why aren’t you looking at Mplayer?

lol ;-)

3

I can’t really help you Brian. I’ve used GameRanger for… Terraria and Age of Mythology, and Hamachi for Risk of Rain but didn’t have much luck with Tuungle. GameRanger was by far the easiest to use and worked well. Hamachi was a pain, but eventually worked, Tuungle we just couldn’t wrap our heads round.

4

I’ve only used GameRanger and Hamachi. GameRanger was pretty plug-n-play and Hamachi…wasn’t. Unfortunately GameRanger has started to use video ads which expand and play (with sound) if your cursor happens to pass near them which I find incredibly obnoxious, and while a subscription that eliminates them isn’t too terribly expensive, it’s still more money than makes sense for me to drop on something I’ve used maybe four or five times in my entire life.

5

Tunngle seemed pretty easy to use for me and a friend. The service is separated into a different room for each game, and you simply go into that room and you’re instantly lan-connected to everyone else in the room.

You may see a problem there - you probably only want to be connected to your friends. What me and a friend did was just go into rooms with 0 people in them and that way we’d be the only people in there.

Maybe there’s an option for a private room, not sure.

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Apparently Tunngle can make private rooms, but it looks like Evolve can too. Ugh.

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So I ended up going with Evolve. Seemed like a more stable platform, not as much shady shit going on with ads and the like, and worked great with almost every game we tried, like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter or Sword of the Stars. Now I really wanna try it with Klingon Academy and Starfleet Command.

8

Shady shit? Seriously?

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Oh yeah, Tunngle was realllllly weird. It had some odd shit seemingly built into it, not just weird pop under ads but also some odd requirements for setting up a channel, like what almost looked like a Spyware installation. It just felt fairly shady all around and set my spider senses tingling.

Why do you ask in such an abrupt manner? Do you work for the Tunngle folks or some such?

10

Sorry, no, it looked like you were talking about GameRanger for this part (in the context of malkav11’s comments). I think GameRanger’s the only one that doesn’t install extra devices and things on your system.

11

Oh no, sorry, I was talking about Tunngle. Both Tunngle and Evolve install virtual LAN adapters, and you’re right, GameRanger doesn’t. I was less concerned about that, however, than about the weird other shit Tunngle wanted me to install just to start a free channel, like browser toolbar level of shadiness, you know? Evolve and GR don’t share that issue, thankfully.

Oh derp, I see in your profile that you’re the creator of GameRanger! Nice, Hello, really like your service!

12

I vote GameRanger, who has been involved in QT3 for a long time.

13

GameRanger is great when it works, but it doesn’t work for every game. Even if it says a game is stupported, it might not work, so it’s been a bit inconsistent.