Author Topic: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2  (Read 23986 times)

Online apanx

Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #40 on: January 24, 2017, 03:36:21 PM »
Fooling around with Badger

Offline Dreamcast

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #41 on: January 24, 2017, 03:39:53 PM »
Fooling around with Badger


That's cool. #understatement

Offline Reier

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #42 on: January 24, 2017, 03:50:04 PM »
how delayed was it for the non-host
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Offline Badger

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #43 on: January 24, 2017, 04:48:09 PM »
on the edge of playable. Still very laggy. I imagine LW DSL IRL fights where neither bots are extenderbots would be playable, just.
also lol at most toxic guy around calling others out on this sh**
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Offline DeadGenocide

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #44 on: January 24, 2017, 05:31:05 PM »
on the edge of playable. Still very laggy. I imagine LW DSL IRL fights where neither bots are extenderbots would be playable, just.
Christ you played as Kris Wolf

also does anyone see that it says penut butta during the count before i fight where a bot name isn't showing
i'm only a finalist in BBEAMS 7 which was a meme tournament and I just stole a NAR AI bot and made it dense as ****.
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Offline Dreamcast

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #45 on: January 24, 2017, 05:41:07 PM »
also does anyone see that it says penut butta during the count before i fight where a bot name isn't showing

Yep. That's the placeholder name a programmer implemented. I guess preventing the extra panels from showing up was extra work or something.

Offline Serge

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #46 on: January 26, 2017, 09:50:17 AM »
Ah, the game uses DirectPlay :/. One one hand - COM is a pain. On the other, I at least don't have to reverse engineer the wire format.

It also does not work under Wine:

Code: [Select]
fixme:dpnet:IDirectPlay8PeerImpl_SetPeerInfo (0xfe0f20)->(0x33f3d4,(nil),(nil),80000000) Semi-stub.
fixme:dpnet:IDirectPlay8PeerImpl_Host (0xfe0f20)->(0x33f3ec,0x72e0b4,1,(nil),(nil),(nil),0): stub

Looks like I'll have to resuscitate the ol' Windows laptop I have somewhere...
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Offline Badger

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #47 on: January 26, 2017, 12:03:46 PM »
Ah, the game uses DirectPlay :/. One one hand - COM is a pain. On the other, I at least don't have to reverse engineer the wire format.

It also does not work under Wine:

Code: [Select]
fixme:dpnet:IDirectPlay8PeerImpl_SetPeerInfo (0xfe0f20)->(0x33f3d4,(nil),(nil),80000000) Semi-stub.
fixme:dpnet:IDirectPlay8PeerImpl_Host (0xfe0f20)->(0x33f3ec,0x72e0b4,1,(nil),(nil),(nil),0): stub

Looks like I'll have to resuscitate the ol' Windows laptop I have somewhere...
So you're saying that the prognosis isn't good? What are the chances that you can make the online more playable?
also lol at most toxic guy around calling others out on this sh**
Google Drive with my newer bots

Offline Mattiator

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #48 on: February 04, 2017, 10:11:13 PM »
Okay, so I've done a bit of testing with a friend in the US, me being in Canada, operating RA2's local multiplayer via NVIDIA Gamestream seems to wipe out the lag almost entirely. Even against a pair of heavy trinity-spinner melty brain robots in a four-way match, the game remained entirely playable for both host and client.

HOWEVER. This method has its own drawbacks. For one, since you are effectively tricking the game into thinking you're playing locally, the host needs to have the bot of the other player on their local system, and also needs to set up their controls so there are no conflicts with the controls of their own robot. This is also heavily trust based, since the host could in theory tamper with the other player's robot prior to fighting. The host NEEDS a Gamestream compatible NVIDIA graphics card in order to host a game, which would cut out a LOT of potential players. I have not tested this method with more than two players, but by default GameStream only supports a single additional player, which eliminates this as an option for rumbles.

In the end though, we had a blast playing RA2 together without any of the lag that plagues GameRanger or other similar solutions, and it is definitely worth investigating further.

Offline Asbestosstar

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #49 on: February 04, 2017, 10:42:53 PM »
Nividea.
I that used for most multiplayer games? I know civ4 uses it but I don't know what for,. How do you set up the nividea?

Offline Mattiator

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #50 on: February 04, 2017, 11:02:24 PM »
The host requires an NVIDIA Graphics Card, but (obviously) RA2 isn't included as one of the 'compatible' titles NVIDIA searches for. Open NVIDIA GeForce Experience program, go under the gear (options), and find the "Shield" section. Add your Robot Arena 2.exe file.

Now to get the Gamestream software setup. Open Robot Arena 2. You should see in the upper right corner the NVIDIA Gamestream sidebar pop up, saying "press Alt-z to being streaming" or something similar. Press the button it says. Click "Stream". Click "Guest Controls". Select "Plays as me". Ensure under the gear icon (options), that under "Stream", "Allow friend to join and play as a guest" is set to "Yes".

Now to get your friend in. Click "Copy Invite URL". Get the invite URL from your clipboard, to the other player (who does NOT require an NVIDIA graphics card) by whatever means you prefer (Steam, Discord, carrier pigeon). Have them click the link. They will need to install the NVIDIA Gamestream browser extension. This should allow them to connect to your gamestream. To my knowledge, there is a time limit on single continuous gamestreams locked in by NVIDIA, so you will need to occasionally refresh the stream and send your friend another link.

Now to play! Go into "Exhibition", and set your usual options. BE AWARE! You are basically tricking the game into thinking your friend is at the keyboard right next to you, so they will only have access to the robots you yourself have on your install. They will also need to use the controls you have set for the robots, so if you want your friends to be able to actually fight you, you will need to ensure the bot they plan on using uses DIFFERENT controls from the one you plan on using (I tend to set one player to use WASD, and the other player to use arrow keys). If you need to do this, you can go back to the menu and into "Bots HQ" to adjust the controls. Set your robots, start the match and enjoy!

EDIT: I should note, that depending on the distance from client to host, there will likely be input lag for the clients (In testing the worst we were hitting was approx. 0.7 seconds, and this is from Western Canada to Great Britain). Not really any way around this I'm afraid. The only possible solution I can see in a tournament setting is (assuming I can get Moonlight working) to have both combatants connect as "clients", to at least give both combatants input delay.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2017, 01:54:52 AM by Mattiator »

Online apanx

Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #51 on: February 11, 2017, 03:54:06 PM »
Fooled around a bit with Mattiator. With a distance of 6000-ish km (3700mi), the input lag is around 250ms.


Offline Reier

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #52 on: February 11, 2017, 04:36:37 PM »
any progress is good progress. thanks a lot for testing this out.

how bad is the rubberbanding?
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Offline Tygron

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #53 on: February 11, 2017, 08:31:31 PM »
how bad is the rubberbanding?
Should be nonexistant with gamestream actually. Since what you're doing is no real different than watching a Twitch stream (with much less latency of course) and sending control inputs to the computer streaming it what you see will be what is happening on the PC streaming the game. You're limited to the computer itself and the combined network capabilities of the host's connection, the clients connection, and whatever garbage happens in between. So so long as the PC running the game is pretty decent and you both have good enough internet connections it should be fine.


That's cool that someone's testing this out this way. I've never used gamestream like this before but I have used it with my Nvidia Shield. I haven't used it over too great a distance but I can say that I was getting my car worked on one time and with the internet they had I was playing GTA V with no problems at all. And at home i've played Titanfall with it and done just as well as I would have sitting at my computer. There is a tiny bit of input lag that in shooters feel like you weigh a bit (making the Titan portions of Titanfall feel less twitch shootery but a bit more what you'd expect a mech to feel like) but it's all still entirely playable for most games. I wouldn't claim you can be a CS:GO pro with it, but you can still be mildly competitive if you wanna play while taking a dump.

Offline kix

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #54 on: February 12, 2017, 07:34:06 AM »
Apanx, Have you tried this on DSL?

Offline Mattiator

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #55 on: February 12, 2017, 09:24:17 AM »
Barring lag issues on the host's end from running DSL versus stock, there shouldn't be any change.

Offline Mouldy

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #56 on: February 12, 2017, 12:05:12 PM »
So, we've done a very long distance test and a very short range test.

Anyone in the north/midlands or the south west want to try an online game?

Offline UberPyro

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #57 on: February 12, 2017, 12:25:55 PM »
OK, this is really cool.

So all it really takes is some method of transferring player inputs and of streaming? Are there alternate programs that can be used to send key inputs to other computers? I think discord can screen share (or at least I saw a teaser released for screen share posted at the end of December).

Also if two players want to use the same keys then I think autohotkeys can be used to get around that.


Offline Tygron

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #58 on: February 13, 2017, 03:57:02 PM »
OK, this is really cool.

So all it really takes is some method of transferring player inputs and of streaming? Are there alternate programs that can be used to send key inputs to other computers? I think discord can screen share (or at least I saw a teaser released for screen share posted at the end of December).

Also if two players want to use the same keys then I think autohotkeys can be used to get around that.

I don't know if there's any software out there that has the low latency that Nvidia's Gamestream has but there could be. But yea that's basically all that's happening. I don't know if there's a way to use the same keybinds though. Depends on how it sends the control data.

Doing this you could probably play other games like you could possibly play emulated split screen games like this. That's a bit off topic but i'm just trying to portray how versatile this is.

Offline Merrick

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Re: IMPORTANT: this will save RA2
« Reply #59 on: February 13, 2017, 05:47:50 PM »
So, we've done a very long distance test and a very short range test.

Anyone in the north/midlands or the south west want to try an online game?

I'm based in the South West, I'd be up for trying. What do I need to do?