N64 Emulation future Prospects

[pj64er]

When you refer to all 3 major systems are you referring to the xbox, ps2 etc? Yes, of course this will be a reality with those systems but that won't include online GoldenEye.

ya, GC, PS2, and XBox. it might not includ online GE, but probably online Perfect Dark Zero.

btw, the authors of Nemu said the next version will have good online support, theyve even tested it themselves. Too bad its not out, and wont be out for quite a long time. (I know what ur thinking...dont ask for it )

 

[Smiff]

i just don't think there will ever be good n64 online support, the games aren't designed with lag compensation. you'd need an impossibly low latency network. you need to rewrite the games, maybe in a client/server modal. is zSNES online any good? how do they do that?

 

[Azimer]

I wrote multiplayer code over the NET in my NES emulator. I have done network programming since 97 when I wrote a basic chat program for my school's Novell network and moved on to internet based using TCP/IP. My opinions are based on fact and experience. My cable modem service doesn't get <66ms to everywhere in the country. Besides, simple math will tell you what you need to know. If a game runs at about 60 FPS, it would be easy to get controller status every frame or every x number of frames. If x = 5 (5 frame latency) then you can update a maximum of 12 times per second. The overall maximum latency becomes (5frames * (1000ms/60fps)) ms which becomes 84 ms maximum latency for solid game play. The more latency you have, the harder it is to control your guy in a game. 84ms is still pretty good, but the latency of the input to when it happens is noticable. PC games have it good. They know how they are able to predict movements and able to "force" collisions to take place on the server end when this end detects a collision. This leads to the ability to have a playable game with high latency We (n64 emu authors) can not predict such game specific actions and can't force the other clients to sync with the action. Once the emulators get out of sync, all is lost.

As far as online gaming goes, high speed internet is becoming a way of life and will be the majority not before long. So for the lag issue, I'm not entirely sure that would be a major factor in the near future. What do you base your opinions on? Do you know a lot about this topic at all? I'm just trying to figure out who the reliable sources of info are. Lemme know.

PC FPS gamers don't understand what viewing your opponents screen is all about. I could spend a lot of time here making my point but I'll pass on that. We play single and split screen. One accounts for many lucky kills, the other doesn't.

 

[LD.]

is zSNES online any good? how do they do that?

Over a LAN it's great, but prone to desynching. Playing a game like Mario Kart where the two players don't interact as much is fine, but as soon as you try to play something like Street Fighter where split-second timing is more important to the game all hell breaks loose. The slightest bit of lag can desynch the game.

Over the internet it's not even worth trying.

 

[Smiff]

right, so you need a connection that never spikes above e.g. 80ms latency.... it's just not going to happen without a private (probably fibre?) dedicated network.

 

[Reznor007]

right, so you need a connection that never spikes above e.g. 80ms latency.... it's just not going to happen without a private (probably fibre?) dedicated network.

A normal home LAN would work fine. With PC games using normal CAT5 cable my ping between 2 computers never goes over 30.

 

[Smiff]

...so you might as well sit next to each other. lol.

 

[Reznor007]

Well, on a LAN like that, the average latency is only 10-15.....so if you had high speed internet, you could probably do 50-60.

 

[GE Master]

Sorry you guys have lost me a bit here. In simpler terms, what is everyone saying? There was a lot of information given but I can't translate it unfortunately.

My thoughts are this. A game like GoldenEye runs normally at how many FPS? I realize with 3 or 4 players, the game lags a bit on the system itself let alone online. Since this type of thing is experimental, I'm assuming that the fastest possible internet connection would be used. That would be fibre optic, which I may have in a couple of months actually. So, IF two computers were connected via fibre optic internet, would a game like GoldenEye be playable. I realize that may not be possible to answer or would be speculation at this point. I'm just trying to get a better idea of this. I'm talking about the ideal computer on the fastest possible internet connection. I don't fully understand this out of synch bit. Since the game lags under normal conditions, I wouldn't think that a bit of lag would be unbearable, but I'm probably wrong about that.

 

[Smiff]

when the game is running on one system, and it lags, sync is trivial because the whole thing lags 'together', if you like (actually, all players are sharing one modal, and it's not time-critical). when you try to turn that game (which was not made to be) into distributed multiplayer, you are running several complete instances of it concurrently over a wide area (so each instance is running on an independant host, which must be deliberately synced to the others). It then suddenly becomes a very non-trivial problem to keep them together.

Suppose you want to play a game with two other people, that lasts one hour. during this period, the total latency between the core running program of all three games must at no time exceed a certain value (perhaps 50ms, or 0.05 seconds). The problem is the "at no time" bit of that sentence. Although it sounds easy for the year 2002, when you consider the complexity of each system, the many layers in each (app, OS, driver, hardware) and the segmented connections, it is I think extroardinarily difficult (probably impossible) to do in practice. There only has to be a delay of 0.05 seconds _anywhere_ in _any part_ of _any_ of the systems and the game is b*gg*r*d, you have to start again from scratch.. you can see the chance of success decreases rapidly with time and number of players... there are a lot more ways to go wrong than to go right, if you like

 

[Smiff]

GE Master, you can do it by stepping through frames one by one, wait till you've got everyones input, calculate the next frame, tell everyone you're ready, read the player's next input, send that, receive theirs, calculate, and so on.... safe but only as fast as the slowest link in the chain, you've got to keep stalling and checking that everyone is ready to advance, and every send-receive takes finite (+ variable) amount of time... this is why 1964+Kaillera e.g. is so slow ATM.

Essentially not a problem that an n64 emu programmer can solve.

 

[GE Master]

I see. Are you refering to when a game begins, as in getting through the menus in that manner? How far off is fibre optic speeds to that of a LAN?

Well regardless of the historical significance of online n64 play, I see the incredible value in emu's in the fact that virtually an unlimited number of GameShark codes can be activated at once. I say this because there are hackers who can do virtually anything, but are currently limited to the 250 lines of code. The fact is, lining out my pc to my television would be worthwhile to play levels with all the hacks. It's a matter of time I suppose before the emu's can run more closely to the real deal.

Just one point on frame rates. I did notice that supra hle ran GoldenEye much faster than what the original was. In a round about way could this solve anything in terms of net lag? Yes, I'm still grasping at straws....

 

[Smiff]

every time the game checks for input, which would probably be once per frame, regardless of where you are in the game... the system can't tell where you are in the game anyway.

 

[grufty]

There's some interesting talk goin' on in here Howeverrrr......I personally don't give a shit about online N64... if there were n64 games with net code then it would be good to emulate this but since the N64 was modemless there arent.....

I want my motion blur and i want it now! *THROWS OUT DUMMY*

 

[sk8bloke22]

strmn nrmn latest daedalus gfx plugin release sorta does motion blurring, dunno if thats intentional, try goldeneye, and ull see wat i mean. it looks pretty cool.