How come no one thought of this? (netplay)

[shezmu]

Hi guys, here's a thought I had this mourning. Warning, it might suck. So I was thinking with MAME emulation progressing slowly last I heard, it doesn't look to me as if any form of emulation => game => online sort of set up will be viable, yet alone have a satisfactory result any time soon. So then it it hit me. Now hear me out, mugen is an engine built to be able to support a wide variety of 2d fighter mechanics, from super meters and guard meters to bursts and coins. Granted, mugen is normally a very unbalanced fighter due to the very concept of putting characters against characters their original designers never intended for them to fight, yet alone the broken monstrosities that run wild in many of the versions of mugen. That said, perhaps we're going about obtaining the holy grail known as online GGAC the wrong way. Perhaps it isn't required that we find the probably impossible solutions to the problems caused by emulation => game => online. Perhaps, it is possible to make the problem simpler. Perhaps, we could reduce this dreaded equation down to game => online. How is this possible? Well if I recall correctly, the need for emulation seems from the fact that the emulated games were not themselves designed to be played on the PC. If said games were designed to be played on the pc, then emulation would not be necessary. What does this have to do with MUGEN? Well unlike GGAC, mugen was designed to be played on the PC. Not only that, but it is also light on recommended specs, likely due to it's very concept, allowing to it to be played on low-end systems. For instance, An associate of mine was able to play it on a crappy laptop that took forever to copy 100 mbs of data. Putting this all together, what does this have to do with GGAC? Well, if it is possible to modify every mechanic, nook, and cranny of mugen to perfectly resemble GGAC, then the community would have a PC version of GGAC that doesn't require resource devouring emulators. Now with a PC version of GGAC available, it should be a far simpler matter of giving the game GGPO, which I believe is something that everyone could appreciate. Now to admit my own faults, not only is my expertise in the subject of emulation and GGPO does it's online limited, but I'm also not sure if any this is possible or how it would be done or etc to infinity. However, wouldn't it be awesome if it is? Thoughts?

[iora]

ummm.... 1- why would ac+ piss off arcsys and not ac classic? 2- mugen? 3- mugen? really? 4- does ggpo even support mugen? 5- MUGEN?

[4r5]

[Hatred Edge]

MUGEN is crap. Dunno why people want to spit on GG like that.

[Jam-Kiske]

MUGEN is for lulz and nothing beyond that.

[shezmu]

ummm....

1- why would ac+ piss off arcsys and not ac classic?

2- mugen?

3- mugen? really?

4- does ggpo even support mugen?

5- MUGEN?

I had a feeling that this deserved more of an explanation.

@1 - AC came out in 2007 (2006 in japan) and at this point is likely not being manufactured at this point, while AC plus was released in 2009, ergo Arcsys less likely to care about AC plain.

@2 - Hmm... yes and no. In a nutshell, the idea is to take mugen, mod the hell out of it until it plays exactly like AC, make it closed to editing for obvious reasons, and then give that online support. I think this could be a great idea if possible because it would allow us to bypass emulation normally needed to play the game on the pc thus reducing the power needed to play the game and could make doing online easier, though I could be wrong on that.

@3 - see @2

@4 - Not currently. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

@5 - Again, see @2

I think this'll answer the initial questions. Someone will surely let me know if it doesn't. I'm gonna edit the first post as it's likely misleading.

[4r5]

the idea is to take mugen, mod the hell out of it until it plays exactly like AC

You think you can do this before the next Guilty Gear is announced?

[Marquis]

To be honest there is any number of things we can do before a new gg comes out-- evolve into bodiless magical beings for one....

[iora]

point one- you arent gonna make mugen run exactly like ac, not in any reasonable time, and no one is gonna volunteer for THAT headache of a thankless job point two- you arent gonna be able to pitch mugen to the guys who hook up shit with ggpo and get them on board with that for frees, or probably even for moneys point three- we are so much closer to just emulating a ps2 or emulating the naomi board, and getting netcode for that then your mugen idea... lets stick the effort there yea?

[shezmu]

Before I answer the responses to the thread, I again admit my lack of expertise in the skills required to understand the potential problems with implementing my idea.

You think you can do this before the next Guilty Gear is announced?

Of course I myself won't be doing it, else I'd be ripping in my free time as we speak. To answer your question, I believe that assuming that scrubblue is economically successful and arksys doesn't increase the size of the company, we'll be stuck with scrubblue for a long time, with long being defined as more than 3+ years. That said, I'm of the belief that this theoretical project could be done with plenty of time to enjoy the fruits of the labor.

point one- you arent gonna make mugen run exactly like ac, not in any reasonable time, and no one is gonna volunteer for THAT headache of a thankless job

point two- you arent gonna be able to pitch mugen to the guys who hook up shit with ggpo and get them on board with that for frees, or probably even for moneys

point three- we are so much closer to just emulating a ps2 or emulating the naomi board, and getting netcode for that then your mugen idea... lets stick the effort there yea?

@point one - I'd like to know the reason why it can't be in any reasonable amount of time. :8/:

Also, people make emulators, translate manga, anime, and games, create software, characters and code all for free already, why would ripping code from game A to game B be any different?

@point two - Again, why not? :8/:

That, and money makes strange bed fellows, I hear. I myself once freed from scrubblue as well as the ps3 would be willing to pay like a hundred or so, after I get the job that would have payed for the scrubblue plus ps3. I mean come on, it's GGAC online we're talking about and we're on dustloop, I'm sure there's other people willing to provide compensation.

@point three - I haven't been keeping up on the project, but last I checked (like two/three months ago), the dev. was no where near completion. Even if the project was near completion, my idea would still use less resources due to not needing emulation.

[iora]

"I'd like to know the reason why it can't be in any reasonable amount of time." Same reason people people can't mod Unreal Tournament 3 to be exactly like Halo 2. There are a lot of little things, and missing even a relatively small detail can fuck up a lot of things. Like take the whole gravity thing, you know... a characters falling speed? Mess that up even a little bit, and characters like Ky might become even more difficult to combo. Or easier. Either way, not arcade perfect. Think about the PS2 port for Marvel vs Capcom 2; in my mind it isn't that bad... but I don't really play the game much. Diehards though rip it apart... so while you can probably get it to feel close... perfect is a lofty goal I severely doubt you can do. "Also, people make emulators, translate manga, anime, and games, create software, characters and code all for free already, why would ripping code from game A to game B be any different?" People do that for free because they choose to do that, usually not at someones request. And I doubt that you can just burn the code from a PS2 disc and just throw it into mugen. The information might be available, but it would still be a ton of hand done shit. Just remember that the guys doing ggpo support there own projects, with FBA and their server and their site and all that. Plus they got bigger goals in mind if they wanna go the console games route by getting real commercial backing, not some thank yous on a message board. "I haven't been keeping up on the project, but last I checked (like two/three months ago), the dev. was no where near completion. Even if the project was near completion, my idea would still use less resources due to not needing emulation." Emulation takes a lot of time. Hell, they are still working on XBLA Perfect Dark (cries) which isn't even a complex game by todays standards, and thats being done by professionals. If they develop some hotness in the way of emulation for GG, i'm all for it... but I am patient about it and I'll wait as long as it takes. I don't have the time to drive everywhere to lose in GG, and I like netplay in things. That said, I would be very sceptical about a arcade-perfect mugen setup for gg..... as would most people. I'm sure you aren't the first to think about it, but suggesting something and doing something about it are two different things. But it sounds like you don't know much about the process involved, so why not research the concept yourself a bit as a reality, and see if you can find the walls development would hit.

[TGS]

The reason why no one thought of that idea is because it's a really fucking stupid idea.

[Hintalove]

Have you ever tried playing gear on a laggy setup? Why even bother with online gear when it wont even be worth playing?

[EdgeKun]

@point three - I haven't been keeping up on the project, but last I checked (like two/three months ago), the dev. was no where near completion. Even if the project was near completion, my idea would still use less resources due to not needing emulation.

Last I checked (and folks feel free to correct me if i'm wrong) nullDC and Makaron were both running at great speeds, weren't they? All it would take is an ^Core Rom dump and we'd be playing it on PC.

Personally, I'm skeptical that any amount of fan tweaking could make mugen even come close to being a perfect ^Core experience. As stated above you'd have to get every exact calculation perfect, and I don't see any way for us to even start getting those calculations let alone have them all perfect. (As I am -extremely- doubtful that it's even possible to rip said data off of the disc. It's all compiled and unreadable at that point.)

Long story short, I'll personally be waiting for a rom dump and GGPO (or similar netplay) enabled version of NullDC or Makaron.

[Oiboi]

I love it when people who know nothing about making games suggest stuff like this. For one, Mugen is a very bad game engine in general, let alone a fighting game engine. Why? Because shoving character data into an engine is the worst thing you can do to build a game. Real game companies custom craft their engine to tailor to the characters. This way, you can do any amount of things you want to do with a character, and can very finely control how they behave and combo, limiting them and giving them their own techniques. In a sense, yes, their still 'plugging in' characters, but the system is designed to work with those characters-- moreover, it's designed to control and make them behave the way their supposed to. GG has had years to craft their characters into what they are now. Because it takes years to do just that. What you're suggesting wouldn't even come close to AC, and it would still take a big team of coders and testers and several years just to get that far. It's honestly easier to build your own engine, give that online, and make your own fighting game. A lot of people put down the ones who try to do this, but if you're persistent, you can make something in 2 years. But if you're lazy at all, it'll never be completed. And that's why game studios can make a lot of money, because they work 12-16 hours a day for months and years just to get the product out the door.

[coolest]

Real game companies custom craft their engine to tailor to the characters. This way, you can do any amount of things you want to do with a character, and can very finely control how they behave and combo, limiting them and giving them their own techniques. In a sense, yes, their still 'plugging in' characters, but the system is designed to work with those characters-- moreover, it's designed to control and make them behave the way their supposed to.

And whos to say mugen cant do those things?

anyway netplay in mugen is highly improbable. read this

please try to understand what yall talking about first.

[EdgeKun]

And whos to say mugen cant do those things?

anyway netplay in mugen is highly improbable. read this

please try to understand what yall talking about first.

You missed his entire point. With Mugen you're hard coding every value for characters. That's why you're able to have so many different characters available. In the case of Guilty Gear, you have a custom crafted engine that's interpreting inputs and character data to create the output of frame data and what we experience in competitive play. I honestly can't imagine (no exaggeration here) how long it would take to hard code every single value(ie how Mugen would interpret it) of every character and how that's interpreted by the engine.

EDIT --

After looking a little bit, turns out there's a few open source versions of Mugen (or something similar). While this does allow the possibility of editing a Mugenish engine the fact remains that we do not (and most likely will never) have Accent Core's source code. As such it's pretty much nigh impossible that you could ever make the Mugen engine truly replicate Guilty Gear like this thread seems to be indicating.

So on that note, I'll go out on a limb and say that you can't do these things with Mugen (save years of hard coding and testing data), and apparently netplay in "mugen" isn't as highly improbable as you say.

Please try and understand what you're talking about first.

[shezmu]

I love it when people who know nothing about making games suggest stuff like this.

*Snip*

Okay, I'm curious. What exactly did I do to deserve this tone? Particularly since I in several posts made it clear that I do not know the details involved in was merely throwing out a suggestion/question.

That said, thanks to the people who answered my original post without being a jerk in the process.

[Oiboi]

Okay, I'm curious. What exactly did I do to deserve this tone? Particularly since I in several posts made it clear that I do not know the details involved in was merely throwing out a suggestion/question.

That said, thanks to the people who answered my original post without being a jerk in the process.

No attitude, just saying I find it humorous when people suggest things like this. If you do a little research into game production and the details of mugen, doing what you're suggesting is essentially the most difficult way to make a fighting game, much less one with online.

Mugen can be ok for testing character ideas and messing around at a party, I suppose, but expecting it to play any better than a Mortal Kombat game is asking too much from the engine.

But back to the issue at hand, I didn't mean to come off as a jerk. But I believe you've made it clear that you did not know much about the idea you had, and I suppose with what little information you had, it seemed plausible, even easy. If I offended you, sorry.

Also, it's the internet. Grow up and get over yourself, not everyone's gonna either suck up to you or be a dick to you. JUST SAYIN.

[rtl42]

be that as it may, all you had to do was omit your first sentence and the matter simply wouldn't have come up (and nobody would've accused you of "sucking up to him", either).