We’re excited to announce that with today’s update, Moon Hunters will now be playable via LAN. Computers on the same network (such as your home network, using the same router) can play together. Programmer Marcelo made the change after our Unity servers went offline a few months ago, which you can read about the details of here and here. We’re happy to be able to preserve the online co-op experience that Moon Hunters was designed for. You should be able to obtain all the co-op achievements this way.
How to play over LAN/internet
To play over LAN:
- On the host computer: choose a Port (default:7777) and select “Host Game” or “Host Saved Game”
- The hosting screen shows the IP and Port of the game being hosted. Send this information to the people who will be joining your game
- On the computers joining the Game, type in the IP and Port of the host and click “Join Game”
- Enjoy!
Now, what’s also exciting about re-enabling LAN is that it indirectly re-enables online play over the internet. Some of you are willing to put in the extra work that it requires, so here it goes:
Option 1: LAN Emulation Tools
You can trick your computer into thinking it’s in the same network as another computer on the internet. Internally we successfully tested this with ZeroTier, but there are other tools out there such as Radmin, Hamachi, etc.
This will require a bit of tinkering to understand and configure the tool of your choice, but it works. One thing to note is that the Host IP detected by the game and shown in the hosting screen is probably not going to be the virtual IP of the tool. So when joining the host you will need to figure out what is the host’s IP that is reachable through the tool.
Option 2: Port Forwarding
If you know how to configure port forwarding on your router, this is also possible. The Join Game button accepts any IP, including external IPs. This method is usually less desirable because it is finnicky: the host will have to keep this configuration up to date, and the host might need to configure both their router and their firewall.
On the host computer:
- Choose a port number to host the game
- Configure that port to be forwarded to your computer in your router
- You will probably also need to configure your Firewall to allow that Port to transmit data
- Send your external IP (not the one showing in the host screen) to the people joining
On the clients:
- Join the game using the host’s external IP
Blessed be,
Alexandra and Marcelo
