As many of you may have seen, for the past year, a lot of players here and some developers at Dolphin have helped make Melee play well online. As we've expanded, tested, and worked with the emulator, we've found that the possibilities are beyond what we originally planned.
I've been running and working with Melee players for a long time, and we're working to establish and online community. With work put into Wii stuff for Project M, by default, Brawl now syncs without issue. I don't have the proper knowledge of Brawl to really do all that much with it.
One of the main problems with playing Brawl Online via wifi is that wifi is incredibly laggy. Assuming Brawl is the same as melee (120 inputs per second on a gamecube controller, more on Wiimote/Classic Controller, you can correct me if I'm wrong) that would mean it has about 14 buffer on the best possible latency on wifi. If you consider that Michigan to California buffer on Dolphin Netplay is only 4 - 5 buffer, you can imagine how much more playable it online would be.
On top of that, Dualcore Netplay developed for Melee also works on Brawl's engine, meaning that you can play via Dualcore without any risk of desyncing (due to that) if you're both setup properly. That makes netplay much easier to do on most people.
Here are the current problems you'd have to deal with, but are being worked on.
1: No Classic Controller/Wiimote support. Only GameCube Controllers work.
2: No savefile syncing. You have to run with no memory data and use cheats to unlock things. GameCube games JUST got savefile syncing over netplay, and Wii games should follow soon.
3: Your computer needs to be able to run the game full speed. And the internet requirements are higher due to using more inputs and lower latency. Most connections, this won't be a problem.
4: If you're setup wrong, it will desync. We're working on making it so that the emulator detects this and automatically fixes problems. For now, though, you just have to setup right.
5: It requires an ISO file. If you have a Wii, you can pretty easily legally dump your ISO. You can't just put a disc into your PCs disc drive due to various issues, including the fact that most DVD drives can't read Wii games.
6: Using the built in cheats for unlocking everything creates a plethora of messages you need to skip. In Melee, we handled this via cheats to disable the messages, but in Brawl I don't have enough knowledge to even start on such a thing. If we have savefile syncing, that's partially mitigated, but it's always best to have everything unlocked no matter what.
Other than that, I've played Project M, Brawl and Melee on netplay, and so have a lot of other players. The Project M players on our IRC consider it FAR superior to Wifi (and some have even refused to use Wifi after trying netplay!)
The last thing I have to say is that anyone can take Brawl on Netplay via Dolphin right now. It works. What Global Melee (and the Developers of Dolphin assisting us) want to do is make this netplay into something anyone can setup and play, assuming there is enough interest for such a community. We were very happy with the way the Melee Community took a chance with Netplay, and soon the emulator will be ready for Brawl.
What do you guys think? What needs to be done to make Brawl work well? Is there any interest considering there is already online play via wifi? As someone who used to play Brawl on Wifi, I really do believe if there isn't any interest, there really should be. Thank you for reading through, and please let me know what thoughts you have.
I've been running and working with Melee players for a long time, and we're working to establish and online community. With work put into Wii stuff for Project M, by default, Brawl now syncs without issue. I don't have the proper knowledge of Brawl to really do all that much with it.
One of the main problems with playing Brawl Online via wifi is that wifi is incredibly laggy. Assuming Brawl is the same as melee (120 inputs per second on a gamecube controller, more on Wiimote/Classic Controller, you can correct me if I'm wrong) that would mean it has about 14 buffer on the best possible latency on wifi. If you consider that Michigan to California buffer on Dolphin Netplay is only 4 - 5 buffer, you can imagine how much more playable it online would be.
On top of that, Dualcore Netplay developed for Melee also works on Brawl's engine, meaning that you can play via Dualcore without any risk of desyncing (due to that) if you're both setup properly. That makes netplay much easier to do on most people.
Here are the current problems you'd have to deal with, but are being worked on.
1: No Classic Controller/Wiimote support. Only GameCube Controllers work.
2: No savefile syncing. You have to run with no memory data and use cheats to unlock things. GameCube games JUST got savefile syncing over netplay, and Wii games should follow soon.
3: Your computer needs to be able to run the game full speed. And the internet requirements are higher due to using more inputs and lower latency. Most connections, this won't be a problem.
4: If you're setup wrong, it will desync. We're working on making it so that the emulator detects this and automatically fixes problems. For now, though, you just have to setup right.
5: It requires an ISO file. If you have a Wii, you can pretty easily legally dump your ISO. You can't just put a disc into your PCs disc drive due to various issues, including the fact that most DVD drives can't read Wii games.
6: Using the built in cheats for unlocking everything creates a plethora of messages you need to skip. In Melee, we handled this via cheats to disable the messages, but in Brawl I don't have enough knowledge to even start on such a thing. If we have savefile syncing, that's partially mitigated, but it's always best to have everything unlocked no matter what.
Other than that, I've played Project M, Brawl and Melee on netplay, and so have a lot of other players. The Project M players on our IRC consider it FAR superior to Wifi (and some have even refused to use Wifi after trying netplay!)
The last thing I have to say is that anyone can take Brawl on Netplay via Dolphin right now. It works. What Global Melee (and the Developers of Dolphin assisting us) want to do is make this netplay into something anyone can setup and play, assuming there is enough interest for such a community. We were very happy with the way the Melee Community took a chance with Netplay, and soon the emulator will be ready for Brawl.
What do you guys think? What needs to be done to make Brawl work well? Is there any interest considering there is already online play via wifi? As someone who used to play Brawl on Wifi, I really do believe if there isn't any interest, there really should be. Thank you for reading through, and please let me know what thoughts you have.
