GameRanger: a new place to play Descent 3 online

[Scott Kevill]

Hi all, just thought I'd let you know about a new multiplayer network I've created for playing Descent 3 online called GameRanger.

Basically, GameRanger makes it quick and easy to play your friends online.

It has full lobby support for over 500 different games and demos (including Descent 3, of course), without the hassles and headaches that usually happen with network connections (eg. routers & firewalls).

I'm really excited to be releasing it, and hope it helps boost the Descent 3 community by allowing people to host that were unable to until now due to problems with opening ports, etc. The more barriers that can be removed, the more likely the community will stay strong, as new users won't be put off.

You can download it at www.GameRanger.com

Note that this makes more sense for hosting non-dedicated games, though if there's enough demand, a server list could be added later as well.

[The Lion]

The Forsaken community got an email similar to this, and indeed
is also on the list.

Advertisement through forums and email, binaries only... I wouldn't
trust this one bit. Besides, the Descent community doesn't need to
be split up even further; Kali already took care of most of that.

[Do_Checkor]

...full ACK, Lion...

plus: The problem of Descent has never been anything like \"how to open ports, how to configure firewalls or routers\". More than enough serverops are out there who know good about those things and on the player end a \"GameRanger\" would have the same difficulties anyways.

If \"GameRanger\" does not list the current direct TCPIP servers / vise versa it would - if used - even harm the community.



KTHXBYE

[Sapphire Wolf]

Hey, don't look at me, I've been playing Mechwarrior 3 with Game Ranger recently.
(okay that was off-topic)

[Scott Kevill]

The Forsaken community got an email similar to this, and indeed
is also on the list.

Advertisement through forums and email, binaries only... I wouldn't
trust this one bit. Besides, the Descent community doesn't need to
be split up even further; Kali already took care of most of that.

I tried to get the word out to all communities for games that GameRanger supported, especially those that would really benefit from it.

As far as trust, while new to the PC, GameRanger has been the standard online gaming service for the Mac since 1999. The GameRanger website was redesigned for this announcement/release, but I realise that the sparseness is worrying some people.

plus: The problem of Descent has never been anything like "how to open ports, how to configure firewalls or routers". More than enough serverops are out there who know good about those things and on the player end a "GameRanger" would have the same difficulties anyways.

If "GameRanger" does not list the current direct TCPIP servers / vise versa it would - if used - even harm the community.

Yes, that's what the last sentence of my original post about non-dedicated games. It's more for people hosting their own private games, that they couldn't do before. They won't have the same difficulties, as you say, because GameRanger makes the port-forwarding unnecessary.

And yes, GameRanger does not currently list dedicated D3 servers, but it does have the capability to do that, as it already does so for a number of other games.. complete with all kinds of filtering options, etc.

[The Lion]

Well, excuse our paranoia (I guess we should have googled around), but we generally
don't see this kind of advertising from gaming services here. This and the automatic
redirect to the download (even if it's on the download page) are what makes people
suspicious; don't worry about the `sparseness' of your site, that's actually a virtue.
Too many sites suffer from a plethora of elements crammed onto one page, not to
mention useless javascripts and flash.

Still, unless it can integrate into our existing methods of communication (IRC, forums)
and server hosting (plain UDP/IP + game trackers), GameRanger would just be
another Kali, splitting up the existing community into a part that uses it and a part
that doesn't. And that's definately not what we need.

BTW, regarding the \"binaries\" thing - I found a free software (GNU GPL v2+ licensed)
client on sourceforge.net, but it appears to have been abandoned since somewhere
in 2005, after which its use has also declined. I don't know if there's any correlation
with GameRanger's popularity. Anyway, it may still be of interest to people who do
want to use GameRanger.

[Scott Kevill]

Well, excuse our paranoia (I guess we should have googled around), but we generally
don't see this kind of advertising from gaming services here. This and the automatic
redirect to the download (even if it's on the download page) are what makes people
suspicious; don't worry about the `sparseness' of your site, that's actually a virtue.
Too many sites suffer from a plethora of elements crammed onto one page, not to
mention useless javascripts and flash.

No, that's fine, I just wish I'd known before I did the launch so I could have made it smoother. I know none of the other gaming services go to any effort for smaller communities, so that's where I wanted to be different. I didn't think the automatic download would be a problem, since I've seen quite a lot of software use that method, especially Skype. Perhaps that's only acceptable when you have a very well established name.

Still, unless it can integrate into our existing methods of communication (IRC, forums)
and server hosting (plain UDP/IP + game trackers), GameRanger would just be
another Kali, splitting up the existing community into a part that uses it and a part
that doesn't. And that's definately not what we need.

Integration with IRC and your forums, I can't see how that would work. I can probably add support for your game trackers though.

If you don't want to use it, no problem. Just mentioning the option is there should anyone need it.

BTW, regarding the "binaries" thing - I found a free software (GNU GPL v2+ licensed)
client on sourceforge.net, but it appears to have been abandoned since somewhere
in 2005, after which its use has also declined. I don't know if there's any correlation
with GameRanger's popularity. Anyway, it may still be of interest to people who do
want to use GameRanger.

That isn't related at all. It was an un-authorised, buggy hack written by someone else, and even included copyrighted data and code stolen from the official software, so its "GPL" is void. It hasn't worked for years. Grumble.