Play Gears of War over Hamachi

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Playing Gears of War over hamachi is not as simple as you would think. In fact, it is one of the most complicated to set up to play successfully over hamachi. Don't worry though, with the Gears of War Hamachi Pack and this excellent guide, you should be up and running in no time.

1. Download and save the Gears of War Hamachi Pack -- (compiled by me ^.^)

2. Make backups of the original files in your GoW install folder that the fixed files will replace. (This fix will remove any of your old profiles, such as your saved campaign, keyboard configuration. Additionally if you have applied the fix correctly, you will find that whenever you try to click on the profile to change it, nothing happens. You are now limited to one profile – this profile should be named ‘Player 1’. To change it, follow the additional directions below)

3. Replace the two files in the Gears of War directory with the fixed files found in the pack. This will hopefully bypass the maximum allowed 30ms ping for LAN games (as the ping in hamachi will obviously be higher)

4. Double click on the registry file to write it to the registry. This will force GoW to use the Hamachi adapter instead of your internet adapter.

5. You should now be ready to play GOW over hamachi!

6. To connect in Gears of War when you are in the game, open the console by pressing the ` button (usually the button above TAB) and type:

open “hosts address”

Where “hosts address” is the hosting player’s Hamachi address.
Eg.

open 5.133.21.126

***Optional Step***

If you are tired of being called ‘Player 1’, you will need to do some hex editing. Don’t worry, its really simple and quick… true I could type up a nice tutorial for you, but since an excellent one already exists on another blog, I’ll just link you (this is where I originally learnt it from anyway):

Link to: tired-of-being-player1-follow-this.html

***Optional Step 2***

This is really not LAN related, but, it will make starting the game much quicker and less annoying. To get rid of all the stupid logos and startup videos (especially the microsoft one), just follow these steps:

1. Navigate your way through the game directory files to Gears of War>WarEngine>Config

2. Open up the WarEngine.ini file in notepad

3. Press Ctrl+F, then type in the search box

startup movies

4. When you find the lines of startup movies, delete the first 3 lines.

5. The startup movies will never bother you again after this, guaranteed.

Thanks to hamachigow.blogspot.com for the tutorial on hex editing and also the gears of war hamachi image

LAN CS Source without Steam

Want to lan source with your friends but each of you can't be bothered signing up (and paying) for a registered copy on steam?

Well heres how to do it (using hamachi of course):

1. Obtain a copy of steamless cs source
(hint: http://www.mininova.org/tor/1364799)

2. Make sure Steamless Source is installed and working fine on your machine
(ie. you can play it)

3. Set up a hamachi network with all your (friends) that you wish to lan with

4. Create a server, customise your settings and when all ready, create it.

5. Once the game is loaded, bring up the console
(you DO know how to do this right? the '~' button?)

6. In the console type in the following command:

sv_lan 0 -- (thats a space before the zero)

7. That was the magical command, without setting the value to zero, other people wouldn't be able to join (why???) Now you can get everyone to connect by typing in

connect [your.ip] -- (thats connectSPACEyour.ip)

where [your.ip] is the host's hamachi IP (if any problems see the intro guide)

8. HAVE FUN ^.^


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Additionally, a fun game I always play is to have everyone join up on one team and verse an overwhelming number of bots.

To do this, configure the server to the number and difficulty of the bots (that you think you can handle), then set the option to force all bots to join a particular team.

Now when you (and your friends) join, everyone selects the opposing team :o
To make this work, you will need to type the following commands into the console:

mp_autoteambalance 0 -- (again mind the spaces)
mp_limmitteams 20

*note the limitteams command can be set to a higher numerical value if necessary

Introductory Guide to Hamachi

So whats this hamachi?

Well if you are reading (or planning) on reading any article on this page, you'd better know (and have) it. Basically, HAMACHI IS KING. Alrite?

If you need technical information specifically on how it works or why it does it, don't look here. Check out the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi or the official page at https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp for more of that info.

All you need to know is what hamachi does:
1. It is free ^.^

2. By using some clever technical stuff it creates a 'LAN" involving any computers which are assigned under the hamachi network

3. This means you can create your own Local Area Network with any other (friends') computers across the earth, and the games (or other apps) will be tricked into thinking they are all running in a LAN, thus granting you the associated multiplayer privileges.

4. It does exactly what it says it does, and does it well.

5. So simple, if you can't use it don't bother with the other articles, they'll be too hard for you. Sorry.


So how do we use this hamachi?

Underneath you have a screen shot of the user interface. Yes, thats it. (Told you it was simple)

The big dots are the networks, and the smaller dots are the computers connected to the network.
So underneath we have 2 hamachi networks, 'LalyNet' and 'Ryazan'.
Each of these networks have listed all the computers connected to them.

A green dot means that computer is online (and gaming) and connected to hamachi. Obviously grey means it is offline.

At the bottom there are three buttons. At the far left we have the power button, next is the network button and last of all on the right we have the settings button.

Power: Turns on/off hamachi (really??)

Network: Choose to create or join a new network. THE most important of the three. To join a network, you need the name and the password (if any). Once joined, it will appear in the space above. To create, simply fill in the boxes and click 'ok'. Note that the number you can join or create appear to be unlimited.

Settings: Not really important if all you want to do is LAN. Maybe you would go to preferences to change your name of the computer from time to time (eg. from "1337 H4X0r" to "sUpR3m3 0v3rL0rD")

All you need to be able to successfully use hamachi is to have you computer appear as a green dot, and all the other computers that you want to lan with also appear as a green dot, and hopefully all under the same network.

Thats the hamachi intro guide! Yay -- game time ^.^

EXTRA BONUS:
For those wanting to know more, the complete official (and boring) start-up guide is available here.