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Final Burn Neo => FBN Development => Topic started by: jugoso on October 22, 2010, 09:19:46 AM
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Hay, yall
Last year I worked and presented my thesis work featuring a p2p +2 players online feature for fba. There were many reasons why I did this:
- Kaillera code wasn't portable, so I would try and keep code as platform independent as I could. This would benefit hombrew dev in psp, pandora and others
- I was (and still am) very interested in distributed system problems
I got it to work and all. It isn't perfect or yet complete: has some mem leaks, no UI interface and I wish class design was better (I was forced to improvise it).
I'm uploading this because I realized I hadn't the time to improve it and maintain it. I'll be glad to answer questions to anyone who is interested in my code, though.
http://anakena.dcc.uchile.cl/~felema/fbaSync.tgz (http://anakena.dcc.uchile.cl/~felema/fbaSync.tgz)
Some features include:
- modularization of matchmaker. This first version features a 'static' match-config creator. This is located in a separate file: http://anakena.dcc.uchile.cl/~felema/matchconfigcreator.tgz (http://anakena.dcc.uchile.cl/~felema/matchconfigcreator.tgz)
- c++ static lib
- network status test function
- gcc and vc compatible code
PS1=If anyone thinks this should be posted elsewhere, please tell me
PS2=I've been talking to killerciv for a complete Kaillera redoing, but since none of us has time for it, it is going slow as f***... a man can dream
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Wow! That's pretty amazing. Nice work!
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complete Kaillera redoing, but since none of us has time for it, it is going slow as f***... a man can dream
You ambition is admirable and the results impressive. But if I'm allowed to pose a brutally honest question....why bother when we have the lovely GGPO?
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I've tried GGPO and Supercade and they have common problems. I'll try to explain what happens to me on GGPO.
1. Sometimes you start/change to "Lost Connection". There isn't any "retry" button. So you have to close ggpo.exe and open it again (sometimes up to 5-6 times until you are logged in successfuly).
2. Sometimes during a game, you lost connection, so nobody can see you after that,. You need to close ggpo.exe and run it again.
3. Although it uses different ports, its system is closer to classic Kaillera, where you had to choose a Server first (in this case, Kaillera P2P could solve the situation, making private sessions and direct connections).
4. Sometimes yo can't challenge someone because he's there, but appears as "Not Registered", so that person has to close and run ggpo.exe again.
5. Interface is good, but went quite bad on the latest versions. That thing they added to userlist where you see "player1 vs. player2" and just below "player2 vs. player1" is just unnecessary; always the first name is the player1 and always that user is the hoster. In addition it moved them to a separated area at the top of the list (similar to Arcade Live).
6. From that point, after starting a match, on Game window seeing "user1 (Player 1) vs. user2 (player2) is unnecessary also. Seeing "user 1 vs. user2" would be enough (the thing is this hides wins/hiscores/time and all the things we are use to get information from.
7. Again, from GGPO client, sometimes you can't start a game even when accepted and ROMset is loaded (ggpofba.exe got freezed after that) .
8. GGPO client uses old FBA drivers, this includes NEO-GEO BIOS, and the supported gamelist in general.
9. We have just an old version of the GGPO source code, which doesn't make me feel so confident about the future of that project as it is shown today.
10. Although GGPO is for free, it needs money to survive... but it hasn't been maintained for a very long time, making ideas about "pay or get this as is today" (or perhaps worse).
11. Isn't possible to use external plugins to add extra features to network's experience (FBA allows that, so we can record online matches, etc).
12. Although ggpofba.exe allows you to select ROM directories, GGPO client needs a fixed path to show gamelist, that can't be changed, so yo have to add your ROMsets to GGPO\ROMs or add at least dummis to avoid this situation.
13. On the best situations, GGPO and Supercade show more lagging that other clients such as Arcade Live (ArcLive). This could mean there's something its staff is leaving out, but as you can see, GGPO forums are almost dead, just users reply users, no staff anywhere.
14. Is always better to have new ideas/receive new projects, than being dependent of "one voice as a mandatory".
This isn't something "to show my hatred against GGPO", is just I "feel" GGPO could die as it is now, Supercade is almost walking on the same way.
Unfortunately that's because seems to be there isn't someone who were working on that project, and... why not, they use the same "method" for online gaming which doesn't sound so "alternative".
Arcade Live shows interesting features (even being so basic), the thing here is "an alternative exist" and "an alternative should exist".
Well... for me GGPO is not so "lovely", so I applaud these new ideas which could improve online gaming experience in those clients (or a new one).
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Keep up the good work lol. I had some minor ideas for some performance improvements but decided that the best way to make kaillera disappear would be to not getting involved with it any more.
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isamu:
had many reasons... among these:
- source code available to port this lib (psp, nds, linux...)
- To be able to play with +2 players keeping p2p
- extendable C++ (in contrast to 'just' C) so other communication algorithms would be easily coded and used
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Just to let those know who are interested:
A chap called "DigitalGhost" is working on a multiplayer solution for both MAME & MESS emulators called "ClientServerMAME".
http://10ghost.blogspot.com/
https://github.com/MisterTea/ClientServerMAME
It is still work in progress (it has no server browser like Kaillera, GGPO and Supercade) but the functionality seems to be coming together and it looks somewhat promising.
His project is also open source, so the functionality could - perhaps - be made to work with Final Burn. I read that a frontend for Mame called "Gameex" has implemented Clientserver mame
http://www.gameex.net/
I don't know much about Gameex, but it appears that one has to pay ($25) to use it, so it's not an ideal solution for those looking to access ClientServerMAME.
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Yeah, I mentioned CS Mame in another thread. It's very promising. I would absolutely LOVE to see Ponder work with DG on this program because with a collaboration like that, I could imagine what kind of netclient they could bang out for both MAME and FBA. :)