Your favorite Xband game

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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Xranger60
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Post by Xranger60 »

Warp2063 wrote:
Xranger60 wrote:
Warp2063 wrote:Besides Super Mario Kart, I'm curious about WeaponLord.
Me too. What advantages did the native support for Xband afford? Was there a higher level of integration?
Honestly, I don't know. But I'm sure that if it was programmed with the XBAND in mind, it meant that Catapult probably didn't have to write any crazy patches for it. Probably made for a smoother experience, too.
It would be really interesting if a game programmed with Xband in mind, like weaponlord, could access Xband player stats and other features directly from within.
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Xband411
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Post by Xband411 »

Warp2063 wrote:
Xranger60 wrote:
Warp2063 wrote:Besides Super Mario Kart, I'm curious about WeaponLord.
Me too. What advantages did the native support for Xband afford? Was there a higher level of integration?
Honestly, I don't know. But I'm sure that if it was programmed with the XBAND in mind, it meant that Catapult probably didn't have to write any crazy patches for it. Probably made for a smoother experience, too.
My thoughts exactly. Not having to reverse engineer a game was probably something Catapult enjoyed. James Goddard, the lead designer on Weaponlord, has partaken in quite a few online interviews. Perhaps one of those can shed some light on the subject.
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Post by rush6432 »

from what i understand, the weapon lord game was the only game to have the xband support coded in which meant it could send info back directly to the xband os easily without the patching from the fred chip inside the xband modem. im not sure if it eliminated the need for a patch all together or if it was just a base to get the game playing and xband added patches to update the gameplay along the way if there were issues?

Would definatly be interesting if we could get the lead programmer to answer some questions and maybe give us some specific info. if not, we'll still be able to run the game over xband 2.0 without any info, just might take a little hacking to get it to work properly again.
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Post by rush6432 »

Xranger60 wrote:
Xband411 wrote:
lazyhoboguy wrote:Thanks for that list. Super Mario Kart, NBA JAM, Kirby's Avalanche , and Doom on SNES sound interesting to me, although I never have played these on SNES.
I own Doom for the SNES and played 1 game via Xband. It's terrible. :(
You can't tell what is what due to the terrible graphics.
I was curious about Doom. I'm wondering how the Xband devs implemented two player functionality- was it done via manipulation of some sort of link cable mode? Or did the catapult devs effectively create a new mode?

I still find it interesting that the SNES was even capable of 2 player function with Doom (even though floors and ceilings were missing and monsters were always facing the player, and levels were cut out and shrunk :lol:).
As for doom there never was a multiplayer mode that was accessible to the public from what i understand. i believe the entire thing was hacked to allow multiplayer via a catapult patch.. i dont even know where to begin to touch on this subject but i know the menu for level select was coded completely by catapult. mods like this CAN be done but it alot of extensive coding.
this may be a tough one to implement.
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Post by Warp2063 »

My guess is that Weaponlord would simply provide simple points in its logic to allow for synchronization of certain variables during gameplay, rather than have Catapult manually hack in their own sync points. Or maybe they set it up so that it would accept those variables at other times than just the times that Catapult had to program into other games. Perhaps there could have been some kind of stat synchronization, too. It would be cool to have your friends' stats show up on your scoreboard, so you could try to beat their times or whatever.

I'm just taking some guesses here... without actually asking, getting it running, or reverse-engineering the games... I can't be sure.
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Post by Xband411 »

rush6432 wrote:from what i understand, the weapon lord game was the only game to have the xband support coded in which meant it could send info back directly to the xband os easily without the patching from the fred chip inside the xband modem. im not sure if it eliminated the need for a patch all together or if it was just a base to get the game playing and xband added patches to update the gameplay along the way if there were issues?

Would definatly be interesting if we could get the lead programmer to answer some questions and maybe give us some specific info. if not, we'll still be able to run the game over xband 2.0 without any info, just might take a little hacking to get it to work properly again.
I found this bit of an interview from the Lead Programmer about WeaponLord, Xband, and lag:
Parrying, for example, became widely known to fighting game fans thanks to the likes of the Soulcalibur series and Street Fighter III, but Weaponlord was the first game to implement it heavily. Most of these ideas came thanks to issues while playing Mortal Kombat II and Super Street Fighter II online over a dial-up connection.

Any 2D fighting game vet worth his or her salt knows what a cross-up is when he or she sees it. It's the idea that you can hurl yourself at another character to land behind them, but launch a mid-air attack that can be rendered unblockable. It's a textbook tactic, but in the days of laggy dial-up, a poor defense against a cross-up could define the momentum of a match. It was exploited nearly as much as resetting the console or pulling the phone cord out of the modem mid-match.

Since both Winstead and Goddard were both heavy tournament players, they wanted to design and execute a fighting game that could hold up to hardcore players. Goddard describes the tweaking process. "Because we had about five months to spare before launch, we did a little reverse engineering and planned for a few things to make sure that the timing and lag would feel good. Unfortunately, back then, that was all new territory, and we didn't realize that we should've gone asynchronous code on that, but I don't even think that was an option on that system back then." Because the advancements of communication in online gaming were more primitive back then, the Weaponlord team played with the animation itself. He calibrated the timing so that parry animations were just as short as the ideal lag time for modem communication from San Francisco to New York. It ensured that there would be no element of surprise and no phantom attacks, which he refers to as "f-ing time travel."

The team also refined the delay time for players to change direction. That meant that if someone tried to cross you up, the game would defer to the defending player and give you time to block the oncoming attack. "We designed it that way, because we were hoping to have hardcore tournaments, and we were really uptight about making sure people wouldn't get screwed on stuff like that, says Goddard, "Good thing too, because we were playing [former Tips & Tricks editor and Capcom employee] Jason Wilson, who used to rank as one of the best Hyper Fighting players around and this guy Battlechaser on the SNES version. They were crossing the shit out of us, and it was still working with the protection. So that ended up being a good choice. Now, that's the only time playing online that I saw it, because Weaponlord wasn't exactly the smash hit we were hoping for, but at least it was there. That's a tip for anyone thinking of making a game: make sure it's there, because even if you encounter at least one person who will try to exploit it, you have it in there. Just don't spend months doing it; that's not worth it."
This is the kind of thing that games like MK2 and SSFII never had, and is probably what they meant when they said this game was developed for Xband.
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Post by Xranger60 »

The WeaponLord developer was surprisingly frank in that quote about the game's lack of success. Still, it's nice that internet play considerations were incorporated right into the game. Of course code tweaks wouldn't be able to stop a dedicated player from taking advantage of lag, but I wonder how the tweaks fared with average players. Did anyone here every play Weaponlord?
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