Date : Mon, 15 Oct 2001 05:08:09 -0700 (PDT)
From : Thomas Harte <t.harte@...>
Subject: Re: 2 player gaming
> 1. run two separate emulations, synchronized over the net - the input
> devices could even be split up between the players, so that player 2 has
no
> way of messing things up for player 1, and vice versa.
> 2. run the emulation on the side of one of the players', designated as a
> server - the other will just get screen and sound output sent over the
'net,
> while sending input device data back. This will probably give an unfair
> advantage to the person one the server side.
Solution 1 would certainly have the lowest overhead, and I don't see why it
need be fixed at two players (e.g. Dun Junz is four player, isn't it?). The
only problem would be synchronising the initial state. With ElectrEm this
would be mostly easy since the two most common options for game sources are
state snapshots and UEF-Tape files, most of which the emulator can 'fast
load' - i.e. in both cases the emulator is directly aware when loading has
finished. To my mind, no particularly clean solution for disc images is
obvious.
Also, if, e.g., the keyboard is forcibly segmented, how would you play 'take
turn' games such as Chuckie Egg, or Barrage? There should certainly be a
device passing capability.
It would be nice if cross-machine playing could be enabled, but for most
games this isn't going to be possible. For example, Electron ports of BBC
games tend to be slower, and Master series games tend to have more title
screens or levels, messing with synchronisation.
Finally, my initial reaction is that it would be nice to adopt a few other
things into the protocol - e.g. being able to send small messages such as
'follow me', 'lets ignore the track' or 'you do up and down, I'll do shoot'.
And a modern lobby style thing would be nice, although of course the
emulator itself doesn't need to know about that.
Anyway, its at least worth someone drafting a protocol?
-Thomas
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