Evolve - What Hamachi / GameRanger + Raptr would be if they where merged?

While i was checking the Dead Island Steam forum i found a thread with a link for this program.

Seems like a pretty cool thing and im testing it out on my notebook.
Does also seem to have a really nice UI design too.

http://www.evolvehq.com/

 

Hmm interesting, is it a tunnel service like Hamachi too?

We can try it out sometime and see if it works well with Dead Island & Borderlands.

 

i didn't like it, it had/has big problems with AMD crossfirex configs, and it seemed to use quite some resources, its only in Beta so i guess some of these things can be addressed.....but i tested for a couple of weeks and then uninstalled.
raptr is my personal choice at the moment.

 

I understand what Hamachi does, but what does Raptr do?

 

raptr is just like xfire, it allows you to add friends, for chat and game invites and also keep a record of time spend playing as well and things like screenshots, in-game chat etc, as well as that it has a forum and community where you can blog, write reviews and other things, i personally use it for friends and screenshots, as well as to keep track of played game time.

 

It sounds like something that would at best be a subset of Steam functionality. Does it do anything that Steam doesn't?

Also I've really never understood why the need for Hamachi etc? since pretty much all games that have LAN play have online play and client -> internet -> client is always better than client -> tunnel -> internet -> tunnel -> client

 

No tunnel is sometimes better.

If the host has fast internet and a good computer it can give much better latency and connection for everybody playing vs a centralized server that would be used for internet based play.

When we play Borderlands if I host via virtual lan deagle has some lag but its playable, when we use game spy and I am not hosting he can shoot a bullet and then run past it

Tunnel has uses for games that may be region locked and such as well.

 

not quite, you're thinking 3rd-party global server, but I'm saying a server hosted by one of the clients (or on the same network). This is exactly the same thing Hamachi does except it just adds an extra layer of tunnel/overhead.

in other words, instead of deagle hosting a local server, then creating a hamachi tunnel for you to connect to his local server over a virtual LAN, he can just host a server and tell you to connect to his server over his (internet) IP which is very different from you both connecting to some laggy global server (keep in mind even when you use a master server browser like GameSpy you're not playing on the MSB server itself, but rather some other server that it's connected you to, so the MSB doesn't have an effect on your gameplay.)

Connecting directly to deagle's server using his Internet IP versus using a virtual LAN IP from Hamachi (which connects to deagle's network using his Internet IP anyways!) will always have less overhead, smaller packets, and be more efficient.

 

I dont think you ever checked out Borderlands netcode?
That crap always lag and i think even our other coop friends experience lagspikes. D;

They even recommend you using GameRanger instead of the default GameSpy on the Gearbox forums.