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Post by secret on Mar 18, 2011 5:51:18 GMT -5
I was referred to MAMEHUB by someone who said it has the potential to be much better than GGPO and Supercade. I've been an avid user of GGPO, but due to its status as abandonware and Supercade's incessant input delay, I'm willing to try something new and support it.
I'm not asking to be sold on MAMEHUB, but I'd like to know what it has to offer.
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Post by Krusty on Mar 19, 2011 2:15:55 GMT -5
I was referred to MAMEHUB by someone who said it has the potential to be much better than GGPO and Supercade. I've been an avid user of GGPO, but due to its status as abandonware and Supercade's incessant input delay, I'm willing to try something new and support it. I'm not asking to be sold on MAMEHUB, but I'd like to know what it has to offer. I haven't tried all of the platforms you've mentioned but I'll give this a shot.
MAMEHub is still under development and hasn't been abandoned. There is a fixed input delay of 100ms in MAMEHub, I believe. MAMEHub is a derivative of MAME/MESS .141 so you would be using current emulation and roms. Between MAME (Arcade) and MESS (console), there's a great quantity of games supported (10,000+).
In terms of precision netplay mechanics for fighting games, other platforms are probably better suited. If you're looking for variety and selection of supported games, MAMEHub is probably the best choice. I have had 2+ hour long sessions of games like mk2, hsf2, etc without any disruptive lag. But experiences like this only seem possible when all peers are less than 100ms ping to eachother.
Tonight, I experimented with the sync settings as per Digitalghost's post mamehub.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=generalchat&thread=48&page=1. I was having a lot of lag (200+ ms ping) with a player from .BR (I am in .US). We were trying to play Street Fighter Alpha 3 which normally works great when the pings are low. By following Digitalghosts guidance, we were able to improve the experience somewhat. In conclusion, I would say that MAMEHub is still being developed and if you stick around you may come to see the potential that originally referred you here. ;D postscript: MAMEHub generally works best when you bring a friend that you share a low ping with. |
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Post by kurgan on Apr 12, 2011 9:02:01 GMT -5
I'm a long time avid (one might say diehard) supporter of kaillera. Kaillera is somewhat different in that it simply passes button presses through its matchmaking service.
I'm not one of those "1 on 1" Vs. Fighter fanboys that dominate (I admit) our community. I don't hate on those games or gamers, but to be frank, the vast majority of avid members of our community pretty much seem to play these types of games online exclusively. It may have something to do with a certain player demographic, as well as a practical defense mechanism against the possibility of the dreaded "desync." After all, most fighting games consist of 2 out of 3 rounds that each last less than 99 seconds, for a total game time typically less than 2 minutes. And two players at once are probably easier to manage than 4 or 6 (granted a few fighters support more than 2 at once, but even then only two are fighting at a time). Then again these games are expected to reflect a high level of accuracy and precision in terms of button presses and so forth (and people would complain if their perfect record was tarnished by a loss to somebody who somehow "cheated" via the lag).
Me, I'm old school and prefer playing other types of games that I enjoy or were popular during the heyday of arcades, and these are harder to find, overall. At this early stage in the development of the MameHub community, I am pleased by the willingness to play other types of games besides Vs. Fighters (which I have nothing against, and do enjoy on occasion nonetheless). Kaillera enabled versions of mame certainly support way more games than just Vs. Fighters (or NeoGeo games or CPS1 & 2 games), so in that regard it is much like MameHub is in that regard.
While K is officially closed source (the SDK is merely there to add it to other programs), it can be added to just about any emulator out there. However, where I think MameHub has an advantage in terms of Mame games, is that you can join games already in progress (something kaillera does not at this time support). In Kaillera, desynchs are a much more potentially game breaking problem... when they do occur, the only option is for the host player to try to "reload" (assuming he or she remembered to enable the auto save) from a previous game state that was stable.
Although games start up faster, generally speaking, and the user interface makes it easier to organize games (each game has its own private "chat room" prior to starting, and the host player can "kick" players from the room prior to game activation), all players must start at the start and if one drops out, that's often IT (unless it's a game like the Simpsons where you can use an absent player's "dead" body as a weapon, even if they drop out).
So MameHub has some unique pros and cons in comparison to Kaillera, at least that is my amateur opinion after having used MH for a day or two.
A person doesn't have to "choose" one or the other of course, I'm not saying that we can't enjoy all these projects, but I definatly se some ways in which MameHub could outshine Kaillera given time and proper development in different areas. I think each project has something to teach the other.
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isamu
Junior Member
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Post by isamu on Apr 25, 2011 2:46:12 GMT -5
Excellent description Krusty and Kurgan  |
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Post by zambr123 on Apr 25, 2011 6:09:54 GMT -5
Fighters do seem to require the quickest response times possible over an internet connection (I know i'm stating the obvious, it's just so you know where i am coming from). I am not much of a fighter fan to be honest, i mainly love to play shootem'ups, racing, fun retro and FPS games.
I could see a useful mechanism for these games being considered, such as listing the top 20 fighters that MAME can handle, and have seperate tight as possible optimisations just for those 20 games say. I do believe (though i could be wrong), MAMEHub uses a generic online optimisation system for internet play at present.
A thing to consider for the future perhaps.
With this present system, i can even play shootem'ups and games like puzzle bobble with some guys from brazil with a ping of over 250 (i'm in UK) and it appears smooth to me, which was near to impossible before. So it's definately getting there in the main, if not quite there yet for all you fighter fans.
PS: Today, what's more important, is getting another developer onboard !!!
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swi
Junior Member
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Post by swi on Apr 25, 2011 7:06:04 GMT -5
Right now, GGPO and Supercade are far better than MAMEHub for Versus Fighting game but i think MAMEHub is better than kaillera !
The main problem is the difficulty for newbies to launch the software and to forward ports. Except that MAMEHub is perfect for non VS Fighting games.
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Post by zambr123 on Apr 25, 2011 7:15:25 GMT -5
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swi
Junior Member
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Post by swi on Apr 25, 2011 7:20:02 GMT -5
No, but i'll read it now !
In fact, GGPO et Supercade need to forward ports too ! So it's not a such big problem.
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Post by Krusty on Apr 26, 2011 0:12:00 GMT -5
[...] could see [...] listing the top 20 fighters [...] have seperate tight as possible optimisations just for those 20 games It seems that individual game customizations could have the potential to lock MAMEHub onto a specific version of MAME/MESS. Which means it could become like other platforms: forever stuck in the past using ROM dumps that in many cases have changed or been updated. As opposed to the present form of MAMEHub which does get updated with the latest and greatest in MAME/MESS emulation. |
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Post by zambr123 on Sept 4, 2011 6:35:25 GMT -5
[...] could see [...] listing the top 20 fighters [...] have seperate tight as possible optimisations just for those 20 games It seems that individual game customizations could have the potential to lock MAMEHub onto a specific version of MAME/MESS. Which means it could become like other platforms: forever stuck in the past using ROM dumps that in many cases have changed or been updated. As opposed to the present form of MAMEHub which does get updated with the latest and greatest in MAME/MESS emulation. What i'm about to tell you I passed by DG a long time ago, now can I stress right now before I explain what it is, this would only be considered if there is a C/C++ developer out there willing to do this for the MAMEhub Team. OK, here it goes, add client server code to Final Burn Alpha and include it on MAMEhub. Just for fighting games only. Then you can customise away for it without worry of it effecting future MAME updates. Finalburn support would be hidden by default, and assuming we have user profiles, is only visible if you have ticked a box on your user profile to say your a fighter fan. Now if the new GUI was in place, hiding the fighter custom option would be very easy, simply by hidding the "Vs" button from view, here's an example:  I did email the current author of finalburn alpha a while back, but i never got a response. As far as i'm aware, Finalburn Alpha is fully open source and has full state save support. According to DG, as state save is different in this emulator, it would require quite alot of work to get it working. Any volunteers, lol? |
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Post by zambr123 on Sept 4, 2011 7:02:58 GMT -5
I just had a bright idea, instead, we have a seperate EXE of MAME, call it MAME-Fighters.EXE for example, and simply use it instead for this purpose.
This MAME would NOT be updated (hence benefits include no rom changes and limited support required), and would include only the fighter games included on FBA, plus when Dreamcast based game titles finally arrives in a playable state on MAME, those could be added too at that stage.
In order to stop ROM confusion, we would require:
(1) A seperate ROMs folder (eg. C:\emulators\mamehub\roms_fighters
(2) These hosted games are ONLY visible to fighter fans only (as selected in user profile or even from a top menu option called say "i am a vs fighter fan".
...and, and......if you are set as a fighter fan, you have a toggle button available which allows you to switch whats listed in running games list (toggle between fighters and all other games).
How's that?
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Post by zambr123 on Sept 4, 2011 7:38:02 GMT -5
I just had a bright idea, instead, we have a seperate EXE of MAME, call it MAME-Fighters.EXE for example, and simply use it instead for this purpose. This MAME would NOT be updated (hence benefits include no rom changes and limited support required), and would include only the fighter games included on FBA, plus when Dreamcast based game titles finally arrives in a playable state on MAME, those could be added too at that stage. In order to stop ROM confusion, we would require: (1) A seperate ROMs folder (eg. C:\emulators\mamehub\roms_fighters (2) These hosted games are ONLY visible to fighter fans only (as selected in user profile or even from a top menu option called say "i am a vs fighter fan". ...and, and......if you are set as a fighter fan, you have a toggle button available which allows you to switch whats listed in running games list (toggle between fighters and all other games). How's that? NOTE : obviously the updated GUI would have to be in place first. |
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