Melee Online: Progress Report

[Dan Salvato]

If you're actually going to edit the visuals, please make the character icons the same as PAL (assuming you're going to use NTSC)...

You won't even be using the Melee character select screen at all. We're going to design our own interface.

 

[rokimomi]

Will all this extra stuff come after the online beta or is it moving along fast enough to be all be one super package release?

 

[Dan Salvato]

Will all this extra stuff come after the online beta or is it moving along fast enough to be all be one super package release?

Beta will be not open to the public, actually. We'll only be recruiting a few people here and there to test bugs and reliability. You won't be seeing a public release until we have a good interface. The Dolphin interface is too buggy and bloated for our purposes, and we plan to completely replace it before any public release.

 

[rokimomi]

So like a melee only UI kind of thing? Does this include a possible lobby system?

 

[Dan Salvato]

So like a melee only UI kind of thing? Does this include a possible lobby system?

Yes, we hope to design a nice-looking UI inspired by Melee's interface but made to include key PC features (mouse support, chat system) and common emulator options. We won't have a lobby for the initial release, but I do hope to implement it soon after. Another feature I hope to implement at some point is a "ranked match" feature which tracks wins and losses. Don't expect those things for a while, though.

 

[Spyro]

How about if you guys included the stages listed on this thread? http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=319731

 

[Dan Salvato]

How about if you guys included the stages listed on this thread? http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=319731

Those stages have issues that would have to be fixed before they're worth playing on. At that point, we may as well add support for custom stages. This will happen at some point, but post-release, so don't hold your breath.

Same with custom textures. Once we support custom textures, my plan is to allow you to select a custom texture for your character, and your opponent will also see you in that texture (if he has the option enabled). You can also enable sharing for your texture; after the match, your opponent will be asked if he wants to download the texture for himself. I think this will encourage people to design their own textures and use them against their opponents.

 

[ajp_anton]

You won't even be using the Melee character select screen at all. We're going to design our own interface.

I mean the icons during a match. In NTSC they are so big and placed so high that they block everything when the camera zooms out on DL64 for example. This is one of the biggest issues I have with NTSC.

 

[Dan Salvato]

I mean the icons during a match. In NTSC they are so big and placed so high that they block everything when the camera zooms out on DL64 for example. This is one of the biggest issues I have with NTSC.

We considered repositioning or redesigning the HUD, so you may see some improvements on that post-release.

 

[FoxLisk]

We were brainstorming additional game modes for fun and training such as a "no roll mode" where you lose a stock for rolling. That won't come until later, though.

Random events are being a **** at the moment. You'd think there was one "random" function but NOPE, every freaking random event has to work differently.

If you make additional game modes, I would love to see stamina mode with control over stocks & hp

 

[Bones0]

You should make a 64 game mode where L-cancels get rid of all lag instead of just half. Sooooo much brokenness. LOL

 

[Dan Salvato]

You should make a 64 game mode where L-cancels get rid of all lag instead of just half. Sooooo much brokenness. LOL

As a little side project, I'm working on an AR code that makes everything cancel into everything.

Speaking of 64: As another little side project, I'm working on an AR code that gives Melee taunt cancelling.

 

[rawrimamonster]

Kind of a on topic question, with what you're making for Melee. if someone was feeling up to it could they use the same method you're using for stabilizing dolphins online in general for all GCN games? Sorry if this has been asked already.

 

[Massive]

Kind of a on topic question, with what you're making for Melee. if someone was feeling up to it could they use the same method you're using for stabilizing dolphins online in general for all GCN games? Sorry if this has been asked already.

The methods we're using could theoretically be applied to any emulated game on any emulator that you'd want to play online, however they are pretty labor intensive and most of the changes we're coding for are game specific.

I could probably come up with/expose a rudimentary API that could be incorporated into dolphin to sync across an inputted list of memory locations without much trouble. Games like Naruto: GNT would be incredibly easy to set up sync for (just health bar sync and time sync, really), whereas games like metroid prime 2 or gauntlet would be substantially more complicated.

Something like Mario Kart: Double-Dash would be a good candidate for this since there's already a pretty active scene still around it. It's relatively simple compared to melee in that most of the complexity is based on character position, item matchup, and timer sync.

When it's all said and done I could probably enforce sync on smash 64 with relatively little trouble using a very similar method (assuming they would let me contribute to the the Project 64 source code, anyway) with relative ease, considering how similar the games are and how much simpler 64 is from a random event perspective.

 

[Dan Salvato]

Kind of a on topic question, with what you're making for Melee. if someone was feeling up to it could they use the same method you're using for stabilizing dolphins online in general for all GCN games? Sorry if this has been asked already.

EDIT: Massive, stop beating me to the replies, lol.

 

[GOTM]

Just wanna give you guys some more love because I'd hate to see an awesome project like this come to a halt.

Also, does anyone know if there is a setup guide to play Melee online via Dolphin the way it works now? Or is the best current way just setting it up via all defaults?

 

[Dan Salvato]

Just wanna give you guys some more love because I'd hate to see an awesome project like this come to a halt.

Also, does anyone know if there is a setup guide to play Melee online via Dolphin the way it works now? Or is the best current way just setting it up via all defaults?

Just tweak your settings to make sure it runs as well as possible on your PC. It says to disable dual-core but that's not feasible to run well on even a modern PC, so just leave it on. Navigate menus very slowly, and wait a few seconds after GO and before coming down from halo. Use all of your character's special moves at the start of the match to load extra objects into memory. If you're lucky, you might complete a match without desync.

Don't worry, we won't necessarily always be working as hard as we are now, but the project will certainly not halt at this point. :]

 

[The Star King]

You should make a 64 game mode where L-cancels get rid of all lag instead of just half. Sooooo much brokenness. LOL

Nitpicking but you still have the normal landing lag (4 frames normally, 8 if fastfalled). Like Peach's float-canceling. And I don't think it would be that bad (except maybe with space animals), but maybe that's just me.

When it's all said and done I could probably enforce sync on smash 64 with relatively little trouble using a very similar method (assuming they would let me contribute to the the Project 64 source code, anyway) with relative ease, considering how similar the games are and how much simpler 64 is from a random event perspective.

If you do this you're pretty much my new god.

 

[Dan Salvato]

If you do this you're pretty much my new god.

Yeah, it would definitely be much easier than Melee, but cooperating with the Project64 developers would be tough. How would it be distributed? As a separate download? Would every copy of Project64 simply include the extra code specifically for playing Smash online? Do the devs even care to support it? It would be fun to look into at some point but if I had to guess, we'll be focusing on SSBMO for a pretty long while into the future. I just don't want to rule it out completely.

 

[Battlecow]

When it's all said and done I could probably enforce sync on smash 64 with relatively little trouble using a very similar method (assuming they would let me contribute to the the Project 64 source code, anyway) with relative ease, considering how similar the games are and how much simpler 64 is from a random event perspective.

Please please please please pleaseplease PLEASE please please do this.

 

[RaphaelRobo]

You guys should implement voice chat so people can trash talk their opponents.

 

[Morin0]

You guys should implement voice chat so people can trash talk their opponents.

Just use Skype.

 

[Dan Salvato]

Who here has a bad PC that normally can't run Melee? I have something for you to test out.

 

[stelzig]

My laptop runs GC games at 70-80% speed most of the time. Is that bad enough?

 

[Dan Salvato]

My laptop runs GC games at 70-80% speed most of the time. Is that bad enough?

Perfect. Find me on AIM: SKRAAAAA

 

[stelzig]

So I tested it. It definetly works. Nice job

 

[RaphaelRobo]

So it's a version that runs perfectly on bad computers? Any chance I can talk you into giving it to me now? It'd be great to be able to play on the majority of stages without lag.

 

[Massive]

So it's a version that runs perfectly on bad computers? Any chance I can talk you into giving it to me now? It'd be great to be able to play on the majority of stages without lag.

It's actually just an AR code and changing your frame limiter change.

You can try it out for yourself by changing the max framerate to 30 and starting up a match in lightning melee, because that's basically all the AR code does.

Theoretically, using this alteration should halve the requirements to play melee, at the expense of the silky smooth 60fps you're used to from the console.

Probably won't let people using it host games, but if your machine can't run melee at full speed to begin with, you shouldn't be trying to host a game anyway.

 

[KrIsP!]

What about macs.I feel so dumb forasking this question,I had a PC for gaming but it broke and I'm too cheap to pay for a new one. It was **** anyways, by PC gaming standards, though it ran most games rather well.

but yeah...macs? Or else...I probably will have antoher good PC sometime within the year and I'm guessing this isn't going to be released next month.

 

[Devil Ray]

as a guy who lives in south korea, I really hope you guys get all of this figured out. props for putting in the effort.

 

[Massive]

What about macs.I feel so dumb forasking this question,I had a PC for gaming but it broke and I'm too cheap to pay for a new one. It was **** anyways, by PC gaming standards, though it ran most games rather well.

but yeah...macs? Or else...I probably will have antoher good PC sometime within the year and I'm guessing this isn't going to be released next month.

Don't feel dumb, Q&A is what this thread is for.
The mac question was answered a few pages back right here.

 

[rokimomi]

What would the new UI be coded in?

 

[Massive]

What would the new UI be coded in?

I'm still deciding at the moment. I was thinking of using a language with managed code (probably C#) to wrap the game binaries so we can handle the errors and memory leaks dolphin has more gracefully (it will be substantially easier than trying to find all of them myself). If that goes through the UI will be coded in the C# binding of SFML.

If that becomes infeasible for some reason, or some dolphin dev gets ambitious and fixes the various situations the game bombs out/vomits memory in, I'll probably write it in C++, again using SFML.

In either case my method for generating a UI will be very conducive to custom skins as well, since almost all graphic resources will be loaded from .pngs in a folder, lol.

 

[ajp_anton]

You can try it out for yourself by changing the max framerate to 30 and starting up a match in lightning melee, because that's basically all the AR code does.

Lightning Melee is just 1.5x afaik, but 2x exists in training, so I guess that's what you used.

How exactly does speedups in Melee work? Won't the game have to calculate the intermediate states too, only skipping the rendering part?

 

[RaphaelRobo]

Just change the max framerate to 40. 1.5x 40 is 60, so it should work.

 

[Dan Salvato]

Lightning Melee is just 1.5x afaik, but 2x exists in training, so I guess that's what you used.

How exactly does speedups in Melee work? Won't the game have to calculate the intermediate states too, only skipping the rendering part?

Nope! If that was the case, a speedup of 1.5x wouldn't be possible. It simply takes all the necessary calculations for position, velocity, animation frame, etc. and multiplies it to make it go faster and farther every frame. Though I'm not sure how hitboxes behave in these modes. It might have to calculate SOME things more frequently because my CPU increases on 2x, but definitely not everything. Using our technique likely cuts the requirements practically in half.

Also, we're not using any built-in "mode" but instead changing a global speed variable. We can change it to whatever we want.

 

[Massive]

Lightning Melee is just 1.5x afaik, but 2x exists in training, so I guess that's what you used.

I haven't actually loaded a lightning melee match in probably 4 or 5 years, so I honestly didn't remember. My thanks for the correction.

 

[Bones0]

So if I understood correctly (I'd be surprised if I did lol) you are using Lightning Melee and then slowing it down to normal speed so the game only has to load half the **** it normally does?

 

[Dan Salvato]

So if I understood correctly (I'd be surprised if I did lol) you are using Lightning Melee and then slowing it down to normal speed so the game only has to load half the **** it normally does?

Yes, that's the basic gist of what we're doing. A PC that can't run Melee at full speed will be able to set Dolphin's speed to 50% and then double the speed of Melee.

Keep in mind that in doing so, you only get 30fps, which makes the game look kinda choppy compared to what you're used to. But, it's not a bad trade-off once you get used to it. Another thing to point out is that I still have some testing to do to see how quickly inputs are processed and if the skipped frames still have their hitboxes calculated (I think they do).

 

[Bones0]

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering is how it will actually affect play. Won't something like this make SDIing, ledge teching, and L-cancel timings shorter (even if by only 1 frame)? Like what happens to inputs that occur on skipped frames? If I want to grounded shine OoS, I have to shine on the first airborne frame, but if my game skips from the last grounded frame to the second airborne frame, how will this even be possible?