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XBox Netplay Already
ElectusUnum writes "Well, it's been a little while since the XBox was released and people are already playing online! The folks at xboxgw.com have written a program to create an ethernet bridge between xbox's over the net, fooling the xbox's into thinking they're on a LAN. 1v1 seems to create no major lag and reports have come in like this one that claim up to four xbox's work fine. It seems a DSL connection is preferred for hosting the server." I want an X-Box so bad, or as I would call it, a DOA3-Box.
There goes the revenue I'm sure they were hoping to get off online gamers. How much do you want to bet future games won't work like this? Or even have any LAN support at all.
While it's true that developers can do whatever they want, I doubt Microsoft would let them use the system however they want (after all, do you think Sony would be very happy if someone released a 'game' that let people pirate PS2 games easily?)
This hack is pretty sweet, though. It would be really cool to play online games with people across the country (or world) without going through some stupid intermediary.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I mean, this is cool and all if you want to play with someone you know across the country or something, but it's not really that useful until there are actual servers up with gamespy type software. I mean, you can only fight the same people so many times, you know?
Username taken, please choose another one.
I'm getting more and more tempted into getting one of these things now. Anandtech reported the DVD playback was better than the PS2s which boosts its cred. All that is needed are some great games (i'd like to see midtown madness and maybe championship manager for it) and a crack to play multi-region DVDs, then I should be begging for one.
After this they just need to buy up bleem and release it so I can play my old PS games on the machine. If they can get EA, Namco and Capcom to support them they should make a killing.
The problem is that in America there is no price differential between the PS2 and XBox (both $299 me thinks). In the UK the Xbox should be coming out at £299, with the PS2 already at £199. There seems to be no incentive in the US for people to favour the PS2. But even over here I'm wanting a Xbox now. Oh well - only have to wait till next spring!
It's nice to see so many people interested in this. I have been on the development team and would just like to let you all know where this project is headed. We are currently working on a matching server to hook people up to each other. The software is highly stable and fast. I just finished a 3xbox game less than a half hour ago. Pings were about 150ms, and there was NO lag. We are also working to implement chat. Expect another release in the next couple of days.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Several days ago I posted a note about a friend of mine who got in trouble with Sony after posting home programming tools to the Internet. To revise my previous post, I believe it was a tool that allowed someone to write a PlayStation boot sector on a CD. My friend used it for writing his own programs to run on a PlayStation but perhaps Sony was understandably concerned it might lead to the copying of their games.
I just want to say how fascinating I find this culture of console hacking and programming. Here is Japan in the home of the console, I wish we had a more active community, but it does not seem to be so. I am not sure why not, especially since consoles are nearly uniform in popularity among all age groups and such.
My only fear is for these programmers. Microsoft is well know for its business practices, and I worry that they will disaprove of this Xbox net-play project. I do not see how this will hurt them but I still think they will not like it. Too bad since it will only make their console more popular.
R. Suzuka
using the standard TAP/TUN driver for linux, I was able to set up an ethernet TAP tunnel between my friends house and mine. (128K ISDN links).
Just pop the ethernet cards into promisc mode, set up a kernel IP filter to filter out any unnecessary traffic, and bridge the TAP to the ethernet card! works great! no noticible lag!
And the GameCube has a PPC processor and an ATI video card. AFAIK, all modern consoles have parts not made by the company that sells them. The XBox is no different.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
That was for piping IPX traffic over TCP/IP. This is for piping whatever comes out of an XBox (lan TCP/IP, I'd expect) over internet TCP/IP. Same idea, different protocol.
See, essentially you just wrap all the packets coming from the XBox in a TCP/IP packet, and throw 'em over the internet. On the other end, you unwrap 'em and send 'em on. Not too difficult. (in theory..)
Main problems are looking after people joining and quitting, and the problem of finding other people to play against. These are reasons why services like Battle.net and Kali took off; not so much because of the software, but because of the meet-others service that they provided.
Ah, but it's not a celeron. You'd know this, had you read Anandtech's article yesterday. And while it is an nVidia video card, it's not one you can go out and buy for your PC. Sure, it's somewhere between the GF3 and GF3ti500 in terms of clock and memory speed, but that's ignoring the extra shaders on the card. And it's also ignoring the fact that the XBox IS A CONSOLE. What that means is that it's hardware that won't change for 5+ years. Developers can write directly to that hardware, and do many other programming tricks that they can't do with a PC because they don't know what hardware their game will run on. Yes, it uses some PC hardware. That doesn't make it a PC (if that were the case, then the GameCube is a Macintosh).
And the XBox IS different than the PC, where the games are concerned. While you might find Halo on a PC, you're not going to find Munch's Oddysey, Amped, DOA3, Cel Damage, SSX Trickey, and more. And as far as Halo goes, the XBox isn't the only console to have FPS games on it (nor is it the first). Hell, the old Super Nintendo had a port of Wolf3D. The PS2 has ports of NOLF and Half-Life , among many others. So just because you think that the FPS is the realm of computers doesn't make it so. But rarely will you play a fighting game or party game, for instance, on a PC. Oh, and you might want to go re-price HDTV's. You can get good ones for $2000 or so these days.
And play Halo before you write off the XBox for good. Then again, there's nothing saying you can't have both an XBox and a PS2. or an XBox and a Gamecube, or PS2 and Gamecube, or even all three.
consoles were never meant for online gaming. It just doesn't make sense.
Well here's my 2 cents.
Consoles are far more convenient and more simple than a computer. How are they more convenient? They are small, light, and very portable. How are they more simple? Plug in a cartridge or put in your CD, press the power button and you're done. No installation required. I'm not suggesting that it's difficult to install a game, at least it isn't for most people, but not doing something is always easier than doing something.
Personally I think it would be great to have the simplicity of a console and the power, graphical quality, and networking capabilities of a PC all combined into one small, light weight, and portable machine.
I love getting together with friends for a weekend of LAN gaming at someones house, but I hate lugging my computer over there. On the other hand, if I had a console system like the GameCube (6x6x4.3 inches), it certainly would make LAN gaming a lot easier. A console and an LCD panel would be very portable.
Furthermore, if games were no longer any kind of a priority for my Desktop PC, I could save a fortune on PC parts. You wouldn't need to spend $350 for a ti500 GeForce3 video card. A $29 8MB AGP card would be fine for most people who just need to display 1280x1024 at 85Hz or less on a 19" monitor. Of course if you have other reasons for needing 3D power, like CAD, then this wouldn't be a factor for you. I also wouldn't be as quick about upgrading the rest of my PC parts if games weren't a factor. Games require more computing power than any other software for the most part.
Bottom line for me - I'm not willing to give up the awesome networking ability of PC gaming so until consoles can match the ability of PC's in that respect, I will continue to play games on the PC. But I would have no reservations at all about dropping PC gaming in favor of consoles when that day comes. So I think it's cool to see a project like this even if it is for the XBox.
I think you are right to say that "consoles were never meant for online gaming"... That's true in terms of all past consoles... But moving forward, I think consoles will be meant for online gaming and IMHO, it does make sense.
Let the flame begin.
This program is a godsend. I have a feeling MS wont have a netplay service set up for some time, and now i can play with my friends full screen w/o having to drag TVs and such over to one persons house. The XBOX may have 4 controller ports, but playing 4 to a screen really doesnt compare to haveing a screen to yourself. Console NET gaming will take off. SEGA made huge headway in to this arena, and it will only get more popular. XBox is going to be hacked left and right, and i cant wait =)
And to gaming bigots - I am an avid collector of consoles, and have a PC and MAC for gaming as well, and what ticks me off more then anything is people who have some blind attachment to one way of gaming, usually because its what they blew 300 bucks on. Heres the point, for all those who still dont get it:
ITS ABOUT THE GAMES STUPID
Finally, about seeing Xbox games directly playable on PC... its going to be a while if ever. Fist reason is MS wont want to cannibalize their own market(although a lot of games will be ports, the strength will be original titles, and XBox first titles, to drive sales). The second is a technical hurdle: XBox on the surface may look just like a PC with a gForce3, but, it has one very important advantage: the programmers have ONE target spec to reach the whole audiance. This has always been a console advantage from a game making standpoint. So while on paper its looks like less then a high end pc, in then end you have better looking games because programmers write games to take full advantage of what resources are available, the target output is a TV (relativly low resolution and a constant), and no huge OS overhead.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
All software runs in kernel mode, unified memory means the CPU and GPU get equal access to textures & vertex data, a second vertex pipe & some other fancy texture stuff on the GPU, specialised controllers - none of that exists in the PC space, and would all have to be emulated.
Of course, it'll be much easier to port an Xbox game to Windows & vice versa, compared to a PS2, but it's still far too different to just run.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
PC = lets say 64 megs of RAM, 64 megs of Video RAM and an AGP bus that lets you copy between the two (think having two buckets and a hose) Unified Memory Arch = 64 megs of RAM which both your video chips and processor are plugged into. Note that originally AGP was designed to work as a poor man's UMA; the card would go directly to system RAM over the AGP bus, obviating the need for on-board RAM. Nobody actually does this. :-)
So lets say you want to create a texture on the fly. On the PC, your processor creates it, dumps it in RAM, and it's then copied (and this is the bit that takes time) over to the video card's RAM, where it's read and displayed.
On a UMA machine, the processor creates it, dumps it in RAM, and the video card reads it and displays it.
Now, IIRC, the PlayStation2 does this the exact opposite way; lots of little bitty cup sized RAM caches, and a firehose of a bus. The idea being grab some data, use it, get rid of it. You need it later? Just grab it again, you've got bandwidth to spare.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"...unified memory means the CPU and GPU get equal access to textures & vertex data..."
This is where AGP comes in it was originally designed so the GPU can access system RAM I don't know how hard it would be it implement due to no one using AGP this way and as for running in kernel mode I know enough to BS about how to get around that...
"specialised controllers"
They are USB but w/ a different connector and I'm sure someone could figure out how to use a CompUSA USB controller and remap the buttons or rewire the connector to a USB connector... I'm not saying I know how to do this but theirs a lot of people out their and I haven't seen anything talking about running xbox games on a regular win2k box or something similar
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I want an X-Box so bad, or as I would call it, a DOA3-Box.
who are you and what the hell have you done with rob malda?
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
According to the site, it's different in that it doesn't require a huge investment in professional VPN software and a huge investment of time in learning how to set it all up.
Wow, that was a quick turnaround. I've been arguing for the benefits of an XBox in the living room for awhile (one of my posts during the release day Slashdot article generated over 20 replies), but I never expected Taco to become a convert.
Makes you wonder, though, if he has some kind of syndrome? :) Swings from one technology canvas to another. There should be something in the DSVIV for CmdrTacoism.
I can safely say that these launch titles were not supposed to be on the Internet in the first place. Now, I have a cable modem, which is second tier to the DSL's I was running agianst. I realize this. But, the game was created with LAN play in mind, with 1ms ping times. However, when I was getting a 350ms ping time (awful, I know), it wasn't compensating at all.
For instance, you can look around when you lag, but can't move or shoot in Halo. Since there's no error detection built into these games, you wind up in strange places when you resync with the server, and then get blown to bits. Many times.
The server doesn't lag, obviously. But the clients do.
Now, the game isn't bad multiplayer, but it was made with a LAN in mind. So, before everybody goes out and buys XBox's because of this, have that in mind. The programmers didn't think they would have to deal with Internet Latency in Halo, so there is nothing to help you if you have a high ping.