Playing Genesis (and possibly other systems) ONline against remote human opponents.

[tripletopper]

The problem is ping time. Games made for today compensate for poor ping time by taking in lots of data and using artificial intelligence to predict remote humans. Old games have to either be individually programmed for the network to make it act right, or else you've got a skatey, laggy connection that's very hard to react to opponents with. The reason why Sprint works is because they are the only ones to consistently have a low-ping connection, a 1 ms/300 km connection, Direct Connect. You could do it with a standard emulator and connection, but 2 problems are certain games have to be programmed to the emulator to get them to work, and the ping time issue of traditional networks. My idea would also work with an emulation, but because this solution works with EVERY game, let's not limit ourselves to the games that are emulated well.

[StarRocks64]

I just want to point out that the Sega Channel and Sega itself is part of the reason we even have online gaming today.

[tripletopper]

True, Sega Channel started a game download service on Genesis, the Saturn had a few fleeting signs of internet(?/direct dial data?) in the Saturn, and parlayed that into the internet on the Dreamcast. Sega had to deal with what they had. Most of the world was dial-up and and Cellular Direct Connect was an obscure business solution from Nextel. Sega made great games in the constraints they had at the time. Faster speeds opened up the types of games that coud be played online, but I believe lower ping times will make retrofitting old games online even easier. So you can literally play the Master System and Genesis online against a remote human opponent, like the Genesis modem was intended to.

The Genesis modem was released in Japan, but then again, Japan is a way smaller footprint, and more densely populated universe of gamers than American gamers who have miles of country road between decent sized rural cities/towns/villages, have the big city population split between about 30-40 major metro locations with hundreds of miles between neighboring major metro cities. Ping time would be less of an issue if the whole country is within a half-light-frame distance (1 light millisecond is 300 km, and frames times were 16 ms/frame assuming 60 frames a second.)

By the way I found a Sega Channel device for a couple of bucks, because I told the shop owner the service is down ever since the days of the Dreamcast. I never used it, but I have the device. I also have found a Net Link for cheap, and even played Bomberman on it. it was such a big hassle to find an opponent to play. I only did it once with a friend at my side. It was limited to one-vs-one or two-on-one-Saturn-vs-two-on-another. And long distance was toll charged.

[tripletopper]

.. you'd still have the problem of playing them on an expensive, slow, buggy network.

Speed in terms of bits per second is won hands down by the DSL Cabe, Fios and other land based networks. Where they fail and where Sprint succeeds is low ping time. 1 ms / 300 km. A ping test between Cleveland and Chicago (distance 600 km one-way, 1200 km two ways) took 40 ms That is a rate of 1 ms / 30 km An 8 ms half frame ping time gives you an effectual linear range of 240 km assuming 100% efficiency.

Plus consider this, Sprint designed the Direct Connect network to work at dial up speeds. If this succeeds, they can make a protocol which can do the same low ping connection with more bits per millisecond up from 33 b/ms to 300 or even 3000.

And for gaming, isn't lower ping time more important than faster bits/ms speed? The only reason you need high bits/ms is to compensate for poor ping.

[Niku-Sama]

I don't understand why your so hell bent on response time when the average PC gamer sees response time over cable at about what your explaining this sprint thing is at.
I regularly see sub 40ms response time when I am online playing games and its just a plain ol cable internet connection running 60 Mbit/sec average

even at 80ms response time most people aren't even going to notice unless they are playing a game like super street fighter 2 tubo championship edition with the speed cranked.
you would be much better off figuring out a way to make an expansion port peripheral that uses Ethernet, plaing and simple. the cost would be less, it would be more flexable and a simple 10/100 port is WAY more than enough to handle small bits of input and check bits from a 16 bit game, hell it could probably transfer the whole game rom back and forth 80 or more times in a minutes time while maintaining a response time of the 2 clients registering arrival of 40ms

And for gaming, isn't lower ping time more important than faster bits/ms speed? The only reason you need high bits/ms is to compensate for poor ping.

THATS EXACTLY WHAT A PING IS! faster transfer response not faster transfer speed, faster is faster is faster! so even if you had a faster transfer speed your response should be shorter aswell (depending on network weather) I think your getting throughput mixed up with response/ping.
I think I have a few telecommunications books around here, a little old but still viable, one even deals in cellular networks

[tripletopper]

The reason why ping is important is because the easiest way to retroactively turn the most games online is to beat 16 ms two-way ping time. Games are 60 frames per second, which translates to 16 ms/frame. The reason why modern games made for the network work is because they compensate for poor ping time by using high bandwidths. But retroactively turn old games not meant to be online into online games without doing the programming to make it work with a faster (in terms of bits/second), but higher ping network, is to reduce ping time to 16 ms two-ways. With a high-ping, high-bandwidth network, you can program modern games more efficiently. This is for retroactively turning old games online. If you don't have a low ping network, you'll be playing a jumpy, laggy, skatey version of the game.

If you want a retrogame to work retroactively with a standard network, you'll have to individually program it to work. That's why Sega released it's "fighter trilogy" (Fighting Vipers, Virtua Fighter 2, Sonic the Fighters) on Xbox and Playstation so close to each other and offered them for $5 a piece, because the network programming is close enough to each other that it was worth releasing all 3 within a week. Otherwise, if you don't take advantage of similarities, then it's real expensive to reprogram games to work with networks, and real risky.

Using low ping takes advantage of a similarity where if you can beat 16 ms, then all you have to do is rewind a maximum of 1 frame and fast forward instantly. Whereas most traditional networks have people popping in and out and rewinding 5-10 frames back and forth. To minimize those jump cuts, you have to constantly update the game, which is easy enough, but requires constant work to update it.

Most old games are not worth the work to turn them indiviudally online. Using a low ping network is the most eficient way to to turn the most games online with minimal labor.

[badinsults]

I'd just like to point out that Retroarch should be able to do netplay, without the need of some silly pie-in-the-sky networking plan. It has a core for the Genesis as well! Making a hardware implementation of Libretro would likely be pretty straightforward, considering that the Retron essentially used Retroarch for their hardware (without adhering to the open source license).

Nobody is going to give you money, when it is clear you don't know the first thing about hardware engineering, and when netplay of classic console games is already possible with emulators. No amount of multi-post rants are going to change that.

[sloan]

Been observing this thread for a while. The gaping hole in OP's theory is that all games will require recoding to permit online play, regardless of ping rates.In the least, each game will require a front end interface that allows the player to choose an online option, or else what tells the rest of the game to sync up with the player on the other end, if that is even possible with aforementioned algorithms to make up for network lag?

[portnoyd]

I want some of the acid the OP dropped right before he made the original post in the thread. Wow. This idea is literally everything but a good idea.

[JSoup]

Most old games are not worth the work to turn them individually online. Using a low ping network is the most efficient way to to turn the most games online with minimal labor.

What part of pretty much any retro multiplayer game you can think of is already playable online and has been for 10+ years over private lines that are dynamically generated due to the coding skill of one guy is difficult for you to grasp?

[MASTERWEEDO]

I want some of the acid the OP dropped right before he made the original post in the thread. Wow. This idea is literally everything but a good idea.

I'll take some of those doses.