Multiplayer Emulation

[kagato]

It's certainly possible...
A working proof of concept on the PC is GGPO.
It lets you play several emulated Capcom and SNK fighting games, multiplayer, over the internet.
The protocol isn't game-specific, so it can be expanded to include other games in future.
I don't know how it works, but it's a very cool idea.

I don't think it's an open source project, but perhaps the author could be persuaded to port it (or allow it to be ported) to the Pandora...

 

[sindbad]

I can't believe this hasn't dawned upon me before, I just realised on my way home today. Forwarding /dev information works BOTH ways. That means both pandoras could be server+client and be used in any condition, including when the same screen can't be seen by both. On both(or more) pandoras the game would have the device output from the other pandora.

This way, emulators/games would only have to arrange for local (on the same pandora) multiplayer and automatically have pandora-pandora over wifi or even online (if latency allows it) multiplayer.

Since pandora games don't have to run on any other os, it doesn't matter that this solution only works on *nix flavors. I really have to test this as soon as I have the time and see if there are any hidden flaws in my rationale. Maybe someone with a gp2x (or some other embedded linux device) could try this out as well.

That GGPO thing looks interesting.

 

[Chip]

Latency should be much lower than 500ms over wifi. I get google pings of ~25ms. People have done something similar with the irex Illiad for it's wacom (used as a device for a computer over wifi) and it worked great. This may still be a problem in some cases though.

That's going to Google. They pay a lot for really fat pipes so that everybody gets near-instant search responses. Going to another user at the end of a residential connection could be (and often is) worse. It all depends on the quality of your connection and the quality of your oponent's connection. Anybody that has done a lot of online multiplayer gaming can tell you that even though latency isn't always a problem, when it is a problem it is a big one.

 

[sindbad]

That's going to Google. They pay a lot for really fat pipes so that everybody gets near-instant search responses. Going to another user at the end of a residential connection could be (and often is) worse. It all depends on the quality of your connection and the quality of your oponent's connection. Anybody that has done a lot of online multiplayer gaming can tell you that even though latency isn't always a problem, when it is a problem it is a big one.

I should have been more clear. It's definatelly not an issue when running over wifi locally (since google is not local, but latency is still minimal), not over the internet.

 

[Hyperpc]

Or how about a server we can connect to though wifi to play other pandora users.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Kaillera.