What's new

Observations on 1964 Netplay...

bluedragon

The Vagrant Dragoon
First of all, I think 1964 is a great emulator, on the verge of passing by pj64 if it hasn't already, and 1964 is the only n64 emulator I've seen that has even tried implementing netplay, which will definitely make it a better emulator once it's working... but I'm getting the definite feeling that the "netplay" implemented so far is completely and utterly untested. Ok, so maybe it has been tested to some degree, but I get the feeling that it hasn't mostly because netplay isn't working under any circumstances whatsoever.

So... the first thing that goes wrong is that 1964 leaves the Kaillera windows with focus in the foreground. That's annoying, but not much of a problem, right? Just set each 1964 to start roms in fullscreen mode. Unfortunately, every time a game is started with 1964 with netplay in fullscreen mode, 1964 automatically minimizes itself. Again, not a problem, sometimes you can just tell 1964 to show and it'll fill the screen back up with the game. So far these are just inconveniences, but surely they would have been caught if netplay had been tested much...

Anyway, the rom loads fine on both computers and starts to run, but now for the main issue: Do the netplay games stay in sync? Well, when two or more computers start a netplay game, they each start the game with a DIFFERENT random number seed, i.e. games start out of sync, for example in Smash Bros. the randomly selected player dolls in the intro are different on each computer.

Even worse, all computers freeze and lose connection (maybe not in that order) if any one of them tries to do ANYTHING, from loading a screensaver to receiving an IM to switching out of fullscreen mode, and they all freeze and lose connection anyway within about a minute of play, during which only player 1 works btw (maybe my fault: each computer's 1964 was set to only have controller 1 plugged in, I'm not sure exactly how to set the input settings for netplay).

Keep in mind that I am testing this on pretty new computers that can emulate games perfectly with 1964, and these computers are connected via LAN and netplay other things just fine (snes9x and quakeIII for instance).

So I decided to try something more simple that it should be able to handle: start a netplay game that only has one player. Everything seems to be working fine at first, but switching to the kaillera server log console window reveals that even a single player lost connection under a minute after starting play, and, in addition, continuing to play a one-player game started via netplay will cause 1964 to crash after maybe 10 minutes, where it does not crash when that game is started normally.

Oh, here are some system specs: Pentium 4 computers with geforce 4 video cards and windows xp, running any of the latest 3 versions of 1964 (to 0.8.5) and with any of the latest 3 versions of the kaillera dll and the kaillera server. I've tried many, many times, with all possible combinations of these versions (well, I never tried connecting different versions of 1964 that had different kaillera dlls or anything like that). And yes, each computer has the exact same ROMs with the same checksums. As far as I can tell, the problem is entirely the fault of 1964 not interacting properly with kaillera; kaillera itself and the kaillera server seems to be working just fine.

I guess I'll just have to be patient, but... is anybody working on this right now? Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks.

P.S. If you can, feel free to say I'm an idiot and invalidate this whole message by proving to me that 1964 netplay DOES in fact work, and maybe telling me how to get it to do so... ;)
 
Last edited:

Plisco

Sevillian
Well the main problem for me when using netplay is that I cant find any ppl to play against...the one time i found some1 we tried mario kart and it crashed so it does need some wrk e-mail me cos i wld'nt mind testin it some more
 

jvolel

Destoryer of worlds
i found a person to play against and i pretty much had the exact same problems as bluedragon, so to answer your post in a way blue..... nope netplay isn't working, from what i understand
 

Top