Hey guys, it’s been a while.
There have been some pretty significant developments since our last post, actually.
A recent conversation with the Dolphin devs has led me (us) to believe that recent builds of dolphin (3.0 r650+) are now almost completely deterministic for gamecube emulation.
What does that mean? It means that for identical variables gamecube emulation will almost always produce identical events. This was not entirely implemented in Dolphin’s code before and was bleeding over to our net play experience. But as you may imagine, this change is really friggn’ fantastic for our purposes. That means TCP communication is very unlikely to desync, even in dual core mode, assuming some of the determinism ruining culprits are dealt with (HLE audio emulation and idle skipping are main culprits).
You can actually play melee online with recent builds of dolphin now with a few tweaks (I recommend 787), and it works reasonably well (speed issues aside). Some helpful AR codes will be posted a few lines down from here.
As for current development, IE and I are diligently working on a unified match generating system that will remove the need to use the melee menus and speed up the whole process. Additionally the aforementioned HD graphics enhancements are still underway (many of which should be completed relatively soon), as well as custom menus, custom stages, and a slew of other goodies.
Oh yeah, here’s the bulk of our infamous “low end” hack that makes online play with the existing dolphin builds a bit more tolerable.
30 fps mode:
04432A2C 0005265C
45 fps mode:
04432A2C 0007B98A
To use these, set your frame limit to 30fps or 45fps, enable cheats, and use the appropriate code. These codes control the game’s speed scaling (harnessing the power of lightning melee, hahaha) and will force a game running at these two framerates play at full speed. This is confirmed to work in single and dual core mode, and can allow even slower machines to play the game at full speed. These are, as always, for Melee 1.02.
Also, in Easter egg news, IE has finished some musical tracks for our project to replace a few things whenever our custom menu system presents its beastly visage.
Stay classy, folks!
-Massive
Glad to hear you guys¡ Keep up the good work, all these menu tweaks sound amazing.
Hype¡¡
ich will sehr diese spiele spielen
This is great news!
And thank you guys for all your hard work, I hope you keep it up!
Keep up the great work guys. <3
The is great stuff guys, the 30FPS code is perfect!
But I downloaded your modified 3.0-793 build, and it won’t let me modify the memcard in-game.
I’d like to get rid of the built-in names, input the ones I use, save, make the memcard read-only, and give it to my friend.
Is there an easy way to do this, or do I have to use another Dolphin revision?
The modified build isn’t ours, actually. If you want to use it, modify the memcard with a regular Dolphin build, then send it to your friend and both of you use the modified build. Alternatively, use the AR code for Debug Menu, as games started from debug never read/write the memcard, and you may be less likely to desync from the menus.
Great!
One more thing: If I use the 30FPS code online, my opponent has to as well, right?
This is, of course, assuming I set my framelimiter to 30FPS and his to 60FPS w/out the code.
I actually can’t answer this yet! It depends on the final product of our netplay implementation, but you’ll find out soon enough. I would say it’s MOST LIKELY that you’d both need to be running at 30fps in order to keep sync.
Just here to say this whole idea is a fantastic one and that when the code goes live I’ll be giddy & full of joy!
Good job guys. I’ve been watching you guys for a while. I don’t care how long this stuff takes, i’ll be here to try it. Really looking forward on the future of this project.
-Corey
I plan on buying a new laptop soon to replace my old one, and of course I want to make sure it’s good enough to run SSBMO eventually. Any details I should know about?
That’s a good question. What it really comes down to is how much it takes to run Melee at 60fps on Dolphin. You should be fine with an i5 processor and any dedicated (non-Intel) graphics card. However, you might want to ask on the Dolphin forums ahead of time just to be absolutely sure – you know, just list the specs to them or something. CPU is the most important factor, though.
Idea for lobby: Make it possible to choose a main in some settings tab so that other people in the lobby can see who you’re maining. If you have a main at all that is.
And I really, truly love you for doing this. This is the greastest thing of the decade. And I really mean that.
Funny that you should mention it, because we were already planning to add this functionality as part of the character select screen.
One of our ideas for selection options would sort characters based on usage amount and allow you to select a default (main) character for starting matches more quickly.
Thats great! :)
Another question: Is teams gonna be a problem in SSBMO? I’m asking since I imagine that both lag issues and desynching would be way worse in teams than in singles.
It will be a challenge but we plan to fully support it. As long as everyone has good ping it shouldn’t be bad.
By release time, each player will have a user profile with that sort of information. :]
Very innovative and ambitions features you guys are adding into the game. I’am really looking forward.
This looks awesome can’t wait till it is finished!
I think I remember this project a while back unless I was mistaking it for another one (I think that one was trying to use the LAN adapter actually). Regardless the day I can play Melee online is the day my life is complete. Keep it up we’re all counting on you.
It pains me so bad that my computer sucks to play Melee online… but I still love what you guys are doing for the community. Thanks for this awesome project.
hallo ich will ssbm spielen
November 22, 2012 at 8:46 am #
halle saale
Your comment is awaiting moderation
is there a way rightnow to play ssbm online?
This looks awesome! I understand that these projects are very time consuming, and bet this is a fairly farfetch’d idea, but is there any way you could implement character banning like they do in several games like LoL? Like I said, it’s probably infesable, but I can’t help but be excited about the possibility of some sort of draft pick system.
This is actually completely feasible, though we don’t currently have plans to implement it. If the feature receives enough interest then it will likely see release, but I don’t see that happening as most of the Melee community does not wish for such a thing.
Needs more status updates! I saw you on Apex Stream (recorded that is). Also we should make a hub or chat for people who want to play online now.
Need a update ^_^……you guys are doing big thing here and im excited :) ….i just hope the project hasent died..
Melee lives on!
Hey, any update on this project??? I really was looking forward to playing this game online with friends.
Hey, you will eventually open source this, right?
Why not open up the source for everyone already so that other devs can try helping out? I’d be eager to try and help in any way I can. :)
FruitieX
Thanks for your interest. :] Yes, we will eventually open-source this when development reaches the point where extra features will be important and useful. For the time being, the work that needs to be put into this project is rather specialized, so we don’t really even have work that additional team members can be contributing at the moment.
This is secondary, but if you or someone you know has meaningful experience with Unity and/or graphic design, then they could be a useful asset to the half of the project that I’m currently heading.
How about doing a Kickstarter? Some guy did for an n64 emulator conversion
Would get you free money and motivate you to work on it more
Also what you doing in Unity?
We have no desire to make money from this.
As for Unity, it will be used for the menu, lobby room, options, and character/stage selection screens. The only part of Melee that will be used is from “READY” to “GAME”. Everything else will be designed by us and based in Unity.
Exciting and interesting
Which is the part that you need help with?
Wondering how this is going, it’s been silent.
It’s going.
Going where?
Hi guys! So I bought a Wii Yesterday with smash brothers brawl just to play smash. Melee was the best version in my opinion. Anyways Wii did not work and I was pissed so this is the next best option. Online Melee! Heck yeh!
So, from what I am reading, you are not posting any alpha versions yet. You started this project well over a year ago. Is there any updates as far as the GUI, tentative release date, patch notes?
As an avid gamer/tester/person with no life. Updates to your amazing skills is like my life support. :)
Hope to hear from you guys soon!
Heyo! You’re right that we haven’t posted much yet. This is to prevent people from being led on to believe that we have more than we actually do. We have made fantastic progress in some areas and are at a roadblock in others. We haven’t abandoned this project but oftentimes we can’t work on it as a primary focus. The best you can do is keep up to date with this blog, and hopefully you’ll be seeing some updates sooner than later!
I think you should at least post some minor updates to prevent people from being led on to believe that you’ve abandoned the project… It’s been nearly half a year since the last post.
Thanks for your input. I am really impressed though with your work as a whole. Where did you learn to do such things? What software/programming are you doing to edit roms and make your own custom rom?
This sure beats trying to make a game in Unity or Blender! lol
Read carefully: they aren’t modifying Melee, they’re modifying the emulator.
I guess AR codes could be an exception, but you’d still only need vanilla Melee files.
What Fishaman says is true, though in the end, the emulator itself won’t need many modifications either, haha. But, yes, I did write a few AR codes that SSBMO will require to properly function.
Coding is done in C++ (Dolphin), C# (custom Dolphin wrapper and Unity), some Javascript (Unity), and PowerPC Assembly (Melee modifications). Massive is a talented full-time software developer while I learned most of the skills I have just for the sake of this project.
i just discovered this site and i am amazed and want to offer my full support in any way possible to this project. btw i am a programmer and would be delighted to offer any help if this team is in need of staff. this is something i aspired to see created ever since this game came out.
is their an estimated release date?
is this optimization just for melee or will this project help to sync other gamecube games on dolphin’s netplay as well?
Good question. Most of this project is very Melee-specific, but it may be possible to take some aspects and use them as a foundation for online play for other games. For instance, whatever system we end up using to sync memory values between clients could technically be used for any game, as long as you know which memory values need syncing. So, it would take some work to support other games. Besides that, we’re working on a new front-end that is specific to Melee, and that will not really carry over to other games.
I’m so glad you guys are doing this melee needs deserves a revival, in my opinion it’s still one of the best fighters out there. Keep up the good work mates!
If all goes well, will this be out before 2014? Or 2015?