Please help with a home LAN Gaming setup.

[ibex333]

I set up two computers side by side in my apartment and they are both connected to my router. Now, I imagine in games that support LAN, it will be easy to play with a friend, but what if we want to play games that DO NOT support LAN? How would we play those?

Do we both need to go online just to play against each other at my place? That seems kid of silly. Are there any other options I don't know of?

I understand why many games removed the LAN option, since many people prefer to each sit at their own place to play... But sometimes friends come over and its fun to just talk instead of "talking" online.

We are looking to play some late racing games, shooters, strategies and co-op games.


Thanks.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I set up two computers side by side in my apartment and they are both connected to my router. Now, I imagine in games that support LAN, it will be easy to play with a friend, but what if we want to play games that DO NOT support LAN? How would we play those?

Do we both need to go online just to play against each other at my place?

Yes.

That seems kid of silly. Are there any other options I don't know of?

No.

I understand why many games removed the LAN option, since many people prefer to each sit at their own place to play... But sometimes friends come over and its fun to just talk instead of "talking" online.

Yes. But then you still have to go through the internet. It's a simpler design for the programmers to implement. (LAN + WAN is twice the work of WAN or LAN, so implement the WAN and LAN will more or less take care of itself.)

We are looking to play some late racing games, shooters, strategies and co-op games.


Thanks.

Have fun.

 

[BrightCandle]

Is it kind of silly, but its just another form of DRM where they force you to connect to their servers to play multiplayer instead of allowing local LAN. Its barely any effort difference from a development point of view because all the match making on the internet does is get the two computers to talk to each other directly, its a way of finding the IP. Having a box to enter in an IP directly isn't hard or expensive to make and its how I imagine most games start before they have even made the match making service.