Why this might finally be our year! Xband 3

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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Why this might finally be our year! Xband 3

Post by Krazystyle83 »

Hola Saturnleaguers!
It's been far too long. These past few years have really been a long and winding road for my best friend LagunaCloud, and myself. Par tradition we've revisited the Xband 3 project every year since our fabled announcment that it was going to happen with not much to show for it. Call me superstitious, but it's always around the same time - September to January (Around the time when we actually made some major headway with the help of too many people to name here - but you know who you are). Alot of you probably have questions, and i'm going to do my best to answer them. I'm even going to take a guess at what some of them already are...

Why did Xband 3 never make it to any form of public prototype?
Because 2.0 was a terrible mess. We learned that we could never make this project as successful or serious without the following :
1. Cross Platform to at least Mac / Windows / Linux
2. Low latency Netplay
3. EASE OF USE (No messing around with routers, firewalls, or escalated privilege terminals)

It seems that number 3 would be the main reason this project grinded to a halt. Ever since we decided to scrap Xband 2.0 we would face a battle with something that we affectionately know as NAT Traversal. It was also the reason that not everyone could play on the Xband 2 software. It was a big enough wound to bleed the beta of the service to death. We've tried for years to fix / get around this problem, and to no avail :(

A user recently asked me why we're trying so hard to revive vaporware? Give up already!
I think it's humorous to call the ideas behind Xband vaporware.... Can an emulator with netplay do all of the following?
1. Can Mac / Windows / Linux users play games together?
2. Do they have to either port forward or use Hamachi to play?
3. Can you pick a game, and automatically be matchmade to an opponent?
4. Is either emulator smart enough to figure out who won a game of Mario Kart? Then rank you nationally?

It seems to me that these reasons alone could bring emulation to the next level.

Why are you back now? I've heard this too many times...
Because the biggest / hardest / and worst hurdle has finally been squashed!
We now have NAT Traversal / No port forwarding required / Cross platform / low latency netplay thanks to the Mednafen teams great work! All we have to do now is the same thing we did with Xband 2, except WAY BETTER.

What makes you think the cross platform development of the client will be that easy? Didn't you guys make the first Xband in .net?
Unity

It's good to be back :)
-Krazystyle
B3LI3V3
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Krazystyle83
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Re: Why this might finally be our year! Xband 3

Post by Krazystyle83 »

Follow up : Imrpve3.0 Alpha Weekend
http://www.xband3.com/uncategorized/imp ... a-weekend/
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rush6432
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Re: Why this might finally be our year! Xband 3

Post by rush6432 »

Great you guys are working on this but..... others have gone down this path already and made actual hardware that works with the snes and will do basically what xband did. check out the Snesoip project for instance... I hear they have ways to actually feed info from patched roms out over the network now, or are testing it currently.

Ive also made a genesis version similar to snesoip but using a different chipset all together which i have working over serial currently for testing purposes. It also has preliminary udp/tcp support using an arduino and game genie to get the job done and it all interfaces with ethernet and works with a real sega genesis.

Anyhow, best of luck to you guys on the project!
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Krazystyle83
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Re: Why this might finally be our year! Xband 3

Post by Krazystyle83 »

Looks pretty awesome! The netplay code could use some serious help. Also looking at it both projects are still completely different. I wish the best to the SNESoIP team, because that is a pretty awesome device
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shicky256
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Re: Why this might finally be our year! Xband 3

Post by shicky256 »

I still do get early access, right guys? :)
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