Xband 2.0

Former Xbanders on SNES or Genesis can get in touch with each other here. Also for people who wish to help with the Xband revival project.
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Krazystyle83
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Xband 2.0

Post by Krazystyle83 »

Welcome friends! (I swear this will be the last new topic I make.)

This is where news regarding Xband 2 will be displayed.

What is Xband 2?
Xband 2 will be Xband remade from scratch for windows. It will utilize emulation to run the games like Mario Kart and NBA Jam.

Stat recording will still exist. Xmail will still exist. Friend List... Etc.
IT SHOULD LOOK AND FEEL IDENTICAL TO THE EXPERIENCE YOU REMEMBER!

If you have any questions or apprehensions... Please post them here.
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Xband 2 Character Colors Test

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Post by Krazystyle83 »

Complete :
Xband2.com purchased (Krazystyle)
Color Changing your player icon (LagunaCloud) - seen above
Database Setup (Ready to handle accounts, Xmail and Stats)
SNES Music Reripped at a higher quality (Warp2063)
Currently Random Snes Music starts on run (Krazystyle)

Currently In Progress :
Mario Kart Rom Patching for locking out single player (LagunaCloud)
Mario Kart Rom Patching for Watching Win Loss stats in Battle Mode (LagunaCloud)
Character Creation / Account Setup (Krazystyle)
Genesis and Saturn Music Ripping (Warp2063)

Upcoming :
Xmail
Challenges (Will support Mario Kart first and work on a vote base)
Buddy List / Profile Lookup
Stats Screen
Prefrences

Giving us support :
Xranger60
Mike (From Xband411.com)

Thanks everyone! It's been a productive weekend.
Look forward to giving more status updates later this week.
I'm very sleep deprived
Krazystyle
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Xranger60
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Post by Xranger60 »

Wow, I am REALLY impressed that work is underway on a project like this. I've always figured that the second best thing, indeed, maybe in a couple of ways, a better thing, would be to remake Xband on modern PC's. I've thought of making a graphical frontend and server but the problems were always manifest at the integration stage: how could I make an Xband program and the actual games a cohesive experience? You guys have the kind of programming experience I don't have, that is, the ability to manipulate the game code directly.

I'm really excited that you've endeavored to work on creating your own game patches. Perhaps you could even create some better patches. In any case, I have a few questions regarding the direction of the project.

-What emulator will be used as the backend for this project?

-What games do you plan on supporting?

-Will the server incorporate some elements that were distributed to the player such as Xband news and the bandwidth magazine? Obviously maintaining and creating new content would be a chore, but some rudimentary support would be awesome.

-Do the project plans include genesis game support at some stage?

I know the project is in its infancy, so a lot of things are in flux, but just a general idea would be appreciated.

I've also got some suggestions:

Any server app/database could be made available as an executable so that those who wish to serve using their own machines could do so (to ensure future growth/enduring support).

Back in the Xband days, the Xband.com website would be able to give an extremely basic list of who was online/playing each game. This would be good for nostalgic purposes.

I'm willing to help in any way I can, so let me know. Best of luck!
Willing to play Bomberman, Duke Nukem 3d, Virtual On, Sega Rally. Send me a PM.
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Post by Krazystyle83 »

LagunaCloud will be answering some questions in reguards to further support in a few minutes here. We both will be talking about open sourcing this project eventually. We will not let it die. My only fear about open sourcing is in order to get the community together in one area, it would be best to not run multiple services.

As for the main thing I wanted to answer.

Xband News and Bandwith :
I haven't actually gotten direct contact with you. You should PM me your Messenger details. But I was giving plans on handing each newspaper over : 1 to you , 1 to Mike from Xband411.com for hosting the longest running dedicated sites. You will also be considered service admins. Mike wanted to do the new Xband News. If you wouldn't mind doing the new Bandwith, we'd provide you with the tools to do so. But yet, even Xband News and Bandwith are in the cards.

-Krazystyle
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Post by Lagunacloud »

First off I'd like to say that you guys have an awesome community here, and that I'm thoroughly excited for this Xband Revival.

I'll be heading up most of the patches, and will be serving as lead developer on this project. Anything technical is my department :)

Xranger60 you have given some great and direct questions for us to answer as we are still in the infancy of developing this service.

What Emulator will we be using as a backend?
-We don't know yet. We are still expiramenting with a huge selection of emulators that'll give us direct control of the game.

What games do we plan of supporting?
-That's a pretty hefty question for the start as we would like to see an active competitive community on almost all fronts, however for the start of this project our main goal is to bring back all the main games that were supported by the original Xband first.
The games that we will be supporting further are to remain in secrecy until ready to be revealed.
Suggestions of games you'd like to be supported are taken into consideration as well. I'd recommend starting a new section in the forum for what is now known as Xband 2.

Will there be support for the Genesis?
-Maybe ;)
The one thing I would like you guys to think about is that we are building in Music support for the Genesis , and Saturn versions as well... ;)
There are saturn emulators that can run well. IN THEORY - It would be possible to dial directly from a PC Saturn Emulator into a Sega Saturn Modem and get the netlink functionality ;)

That is all for this update.
If you have any questions or would like to speak with us, we are always checking into the forums to see what you think.

Happy Gaming!
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Post by Xranger60 »

Lagunacloud wrote:First off I'd like to say that you guys have an awesome community here, and that I'm thoroughly excited for this Xband Revival.

I'll be heading up most of the patches, and will be serving as lead developer on this project. Anything technical is my department :)
Thanks for joining our NetLink site! Great to have you. I know I'm one of many here that will be very excited to see this project develop. There's been a whole lot of interest in bringing Xband back in any way possible. Can't wait to see what you guys can do.
What games do we plan of supporting?
-That's a pretty hefty question for the start as we would like to see an active competitive community on almost all fronts, however for the start of this project our main goal is to bring back all the main games that were supported by the original Xband first.
The games that we will be supporting further are to remain in secrecy until ready to be revealed.
Suggestions of games you'd like to be supported are taken into consideration as well. I'd recommend starting a new section in the forum for what is now known as Xband 2.
Nice. I'd really like to see the games that were originally supported, and I'd be extremely happy with just those. The games I played the most were the NHL series, and if I get to experience that again I'll be golden. I think it's fair to say that most people would love just to have those games back, and anything extra would be a bonus.

Will there be support for the Genesis?
-Maybe ;)
The one thing I would like you guys to think about is that we are building in Music support for the Genesis , and Saturn versions as well... ;)
There are saturn emulators that can run well. IN THEORY - It would be possible to dial directly from a PC Saturn Emulator into a Sega Saturn Modem and get the netlink functionality ;)
Good to hear the music will be varied. The saturn only had 1 song if I remember correctly, but it fit with the feel of the Sega/SNES versions perfectly. The Saturn would be great, but not really a big need for that, because the NetLink games still work perfectly, and from what I hear it's ridiculously hard to program for Saturn. But hey, that could be a sweet direction to go in someday.
Suggestions of games you'd like to be supported are taken into consideration as well. I'd recommend starting a new section in the forum for what is now known as Xband 2.
You guys are welcome to whatever you need from the site to help. For now, I'll keep this thread here, stickied, and when the project develops to the point where the software is ready, or near it, we'll create a separate forum section dedicated exclusively to it.
Krazystyle83 wrote:Xband News and Bandwith :
I haven't actually gotten direct contact with you. You should PM me your Messenger details. But I was giving plans on handing each newspaper over : 1 to you , 1 to Mike from Xband411.com for hosting the longest running dedicated sites. You will also be considered service admins. Mike wanted to do the new Xband News. If you wouldn't mind doing the new Bandwith, we'd provide you with the tools to do so. But yet, even Xband News and Bandwith are in the cards.
Krazy, I'd love to do the bandwidth section. I won't be online for IM much in the next couple days, but I'll have some time after Wednesday. Kudos for bringing in Mike from Xband411, I know he's been a huge Xband fan as much as I have.
Willing to play Bomberman, Duke Nukem 3d, Virtual On, Sega Rally. Send me a PM.
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Post by Krazystyle83 »

LagunaCloud shows us what happens when someone tries to start a Single Player Mario Kart Grand Prix game in Xband 2.0... Even when the player disagrees with the games own choice ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcwzjGquWm0
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Post by Xranger60 »

Wow, that is some serious progress! Nice job, guys! I see you've made some headway manipulating Mario Kart, and this is the kind of stuff that's the substance of the project. Very happy to see this, keep it up!
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Post by Selvis52 »

Sounds pretty cool. Are you still working on getting the original service back up and running?
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Post by Krazystyle83 »

Selvis : Yes! We have not even began to scratch the surface of getting the original XBAND up and running. The reason we're concentrating on Xband 2.0 first is to re-rally the community and get some spark back into Xband. When Xband 2.0 rolls out we're hoping to track down some of the original devs and get them on the 2.0 service. Hopefully with there help, the reverse engineering of the netlink, and live debugging of the actual unit we will be able to help 'crack the code'. However, you must realize, LagunaCloud and I are also busy working on some new 360 titles. So we hope to push the Xband 1.0 progress far enough that some of the people originally interested would jump back in and finish the job :/
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Post by Krazystyle83 »

I haven't given many updates on the client so i'll at least provide 1 screenshot. It's sloppy as its at its very early stages. The screenshot shows virgin 4 user login screen and a test of the message box function which is also very non authentic. Don't worry, the final versions will be sacred in realism.

Image
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Post by Xranger60 »

Created news post on main page.

Liking the screenshot, appreciate you guys sharing the progress you're making. I see that some code is there to connect to SQL. I can also see where you're headed with the message boxes.

Just out of curiosity, did either of you guys play on the original Xband?
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Post by Krazystyle83 »

LagunaCloud missed out. I however was a part of the few , the proud Genesis xband owners. I also swapped with my snes friends. Never had the nationwide any of us. But we're all still friends to this day. And Xband 2 is 90% MYSQL driven! Yes, the message boxes will sparkle, and blow apart into blocks, and reassemble. In version 2 after we port it to DirectX
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Post by Xranger60 »

Cool that you'll be using DirectX for the animations. That essentially means that you guys have committed to Windows only? That's not a problem for me at all, just curious.

I played both SNES and Genesis, but leaned more heavily towards the Genesis version.
Willing to play Bomberman, Duke Nukem 3d, Virtual On, Sega Rally. Send me a PM.
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