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Warp Pipe Launches With Mario Kart Support

Posted by simoniker on from the banana-tailpipe-intersection dept.

jkeyes writes "The Warp Pipe project for playing LAN GameCube games online has just released Beta 0.3 for Windows. This is the first release to support Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, contains significant optimization, and even has region-free play, so you can battle against gamers from Japan or Europe - the first Macintosh beta is planned for next week."

28 comments

  1. Now I might buy a gamecube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Seriously, the entire Nintendo not believing in online play... wtf? oh well, at least now I can buy a gamecube with hopes of playing other people online in future games.

    Go warp pipe, you deserve more turkey for your work.

    1. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Seriously, the entire Nintendo not believing in online play... wtf?"

      Nintendo has stated before that they don't feel the on-line world is quite ready yet. What they want to do is avoid a re-occuring cost for the players. If on-line pay means a subscription, and the service isn't like top-notch (lag?), it's not interesting to Nintendo.

      I want on-line play too, but at least Nintendo's thinking about their gamers here.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    2. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by August_zero · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I want on-line play too, but at least Nintendo's thinking about their gamers here.

      Well maybe, I applaud them for not rushing into some half-assed online service that sucks as well as it blows. What worries me though, is from everything that I have heard about the next Nintendo console, The big N has no intention of pursuing any sort of online plan. This might be ok, but they need to leave the option available to their 3rd party developers.

      I say include a broadband/modem option(or sell them seperately) and let the 3rd parties forge the online services. Even if Nintendo themselves don't want to make online games they are going to regret it if they castrate the online possiblity entirely.

      Having said this, If Nintendo does go after the warppipe developers they are making a very grave mistake. As pigheaded as they can be about some things, I doubt they would do anything that stupid.

      --
      On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
    3. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by Sancho · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Is the limitation on online play within the Nintendo Gamecube Broadband Adapter? Or is that just a glorified network card that depends upon the game to use?

      As pigheaded as they can be about some things, I doubt they would do anything that stupid.

      Like going after the original Game Genie, a device that takes nothing away from games, but extends and expands them? Of course, that was years ago, Nintendo has probably learned their lessons. And on all those GBA mods they tried to C&D.

    4. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by Clomer · · Score: 1
      I say include a broadband/modem option(or sell them seperately) and let the 3rd parties forge the online services. Even if Nintendo themselves don't want to make online games they are going to regret it if they castrate the online possiblity entirely.

      They already do this. The Broadband Adaptor, which does nothing but add a standard 10baseT network port, is available to those that want it (required to use Warp Pipe), and it allows interested developers to develop online games for the Cube. Phantasy Star Online is an example of this (so far the only one). Some games (Kirby Air Ride and Mario Kart: Double Dash) allow use of the Broadband adaptor to play the games over a LAN connection. All Warp Pipe does is tunnel the communication over the Internet.

      --
      Intelligent responses welcome, flames will be met with marshmallows.
    5. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by August_zero · · Score: 1

      I was refering to their next console, though perhaps I wasn't as clear as i could have been. Nintendo's biggest sin with the broadband adapter of this generation is the relatively modest quantities of them that have been produced. When I bought PSO last January, I speant weeks looking in stores for a BBA, I was however able to order it direct from their website. I am not sure if they are easier to find now or not.

      --
      On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
    6. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? That's intersting.

      The stores around where I live have tons of the adapters. In fact, more stores had the adapters in stock than still had consoles.

    7. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by realdpk · · Score: 1

      Almost nobody (relatively) plays online console games. Nintendo is wise to wait until that market matures.

    8. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There weren't "modest quantities", the stores just do not order many. In fact, they don't order much period (see: people yelling at Atlus to print more copies of Disgaea, Atlas people screaming back, "tell your stores to actually order shipments!"

    9. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by DeadScreenSky · · Score: 1

      I am pretty sure Nintendo's real story is they don't feel that online play is currently profitable. Miyamoto, etc. have said just that in several interviews over the past couple years.

      Never heard the "avoid a re-occurring cost for the player" reason - not to rag on Nintendo, but that is probably the least likely Nintendo statement ever. Closest I have heard to that is that Miyamoto doesn't think gamers will pay monthly fees for online access, which is kind of funny - as is your very charitable spin on that kind of comment. :D See Pokemon, GC link cable, those E-cards, all of the price-fixing through the years, first GBA being essentially broken, GBA SP needing a separate purchase for headphone jack, endless SNES->GBA rereleases, etc. Nintendo loves 'ripping off' their players, and always has. Doesn't necessarily affect their game quality (lack of developer freedom for the Nintendo non-heavyweights seems to, though that is another story).

      --
      There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
    10. Re:Now I might buy a gamecube by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "Nintendo loves 'ripping off' their players, and always has."

      Ripping off? People go happily buy stuff and they're being ripped off? O_o

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  2. for how long? by beyonddeath · · Score: 0, Interesting

    how long is this project going to live? Its just a matter of time till theDMCA blasts it to oblivion right?

    1. Re:for how long? by zr-rifle · · Score: 2, Informative

      possibily forever, since it does not infringe on the DMCA.

      It makes no attempt in circumventing secuity protection mechanisms nor does it hack in anyway the machine itself.

      What it does is route the packets to and from the internet, acting as a gateway (or better, router) from one machine to the other.

      Basically, the gamecube thinks it's routing packets to a machine in it's own LAN, while actually it's routing packets to an ip thank to the the Warp Pipe software. Warp Pipe works like a simplified Gamespy Arcade allowing players to accept connections or connect to a specified ip, chat in a dedicated chatroom and forwards packets from and to all machines connected. You should check out Kaillera, a frontend for MAME and other emulators that allows people to play online with games that were developed way before the term "multiplayer" went mainstream, to get an idea of what this cool lil' piece o' software does.

      I have some reserves on the quality of the online gameplay since these games weren't designed to played online. Differences in packet size and packet rate greatly affect gameplay in terms of ping and lag, and the values differ if you are playing on a lan or on the internet. Warp Pipe devs can't change these values, finetuned for LAN play, because they don't have access to the game source code. I guess they'd have to pry it from Mario's cold, dead hands. What they *can* do is work out a proxy that snips and trims packets on the fly, but that would require a massive work sniffing the game packets and a specifical implementation for each game.

      Still, it's better than nothing. A big thumbs up to the dev team.

      --
      Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
    2. Re:for how long? by 77Punker · · Score: 1

      Forever, it appears to me. Nintendo has always taken good care of its customers, even re-writing bad cartridges for NES up until a few months ago. I doubt they'd ruin the fun on something that's not going to cut in on their profits, and may indeed increase sales of broadband adapters and LAN games.

  3. This news by zr-rifle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... made me seriously consider buying a gamecube instead of an xbox this xmas.

    For 99, I'd get the latest in home entertainment technologyl, complete with online play (even if still buggy, as I presume it is since it's a beta).

    Before unleashing the wrath of the DMCA upon these hackers, Nintendo should think about the advantages brought to it's console at absolutely no cost whatsoever.

    --
    Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
    1. Re:This news by Dave_B93 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Actually if you go to Wal*Mart Tomorrow, you can get one for $78

      For more info, check out this blurb at GameSpy

      or are you counting the cost of a broadband adapter ( approx $35US) in your total?

  4. Warp Pipe GPL release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The last GPL'd release of Warp Pipe (including sources) is available here for download.

    1. Re:Warp Pipe GPL release... by Dave_B93 · · Score: 3, Informative
      That version is 2-3 weeks old and doens't work very well with MK:DD, also it isn't being maintained by anybody. (not to mention the fact that the source is still availible from sourceforge CVS for now which has a fatter pipe, or that they thought they'd gone closed source a few months ago, so having that code is kind of questionable)

      There's already 2 projects working on GC tunelling warppipe and X-Link, so I don't see how starting a new fork of warppipe off 3 week old code is going to help unless you're a lot better at network algorithms than I am, or you're just a roll-your-own kinda guy.

      Personally I'm going to try Warppipe tonight, then keep playing it till X-Link Kai comes out and compare the 2. I don't feel like hacking together someone's old code in hopes of getting my own solution working... but then again, I'm just lazy ;-)

    2. Re:Warp Pipe GPL release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      X-Link supports Gamecube? ...Linux?

      Warp Pipe stopped supporting Linux after abusing SF's services for a closed source project.

      End of story.

    3. Re:Warp Pipe GPL release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      blablabla

      It might be a little outdated. But that doesn't matter because it is a working release and it comes with sources.

    4. Re:Warp Pipe GPL release... by Dave_B93 · · Score: 1
      XLink RC3 (codename Kai) will have GameCube support. It's about to go into a closed beta, However XLink is still Windows only. They're thinking about perhaps releasing some source under a kind of opensource license so people could port it, but that probably won't happen untill after Kai comes out.

      Read up on it here under "XLink RC3 Update"

    5. Re:Warp Pipe GPL release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Warp Pipe stopped supporting Linux after abusing SF's services for a closed source project.

      Exactly. I love my Cube and MK:DD, but the Warp Pipe team are a bunch of idiots and they can cram their closed-source Windows beta release up their collective asses.

  5. WTF???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Has slashdot turned into freshmeat that such pathetic (and closed source!!!) projects are announced here?

  6. Frankly, I'm glad Nintendo doesn't do much online by Man+In+Black · · Score: 2, Troll

    Considering the way Nintendo whores out it's GBA-GC link cable with the promise of extra content (most of which really should have been enabled from the start), I can only imagine how much stuff they'd force you to go online for... they'd probably end up giving you only half a game. The other two quarters would be unlocked via the internet and GBA link respectively... No thanks!

    --
    -"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
  7. Ladders by Nexxpert · · Score: 1

    Can't wait for this thing to be stable, plan on grabbing an adapter soon as they get a 1.0 release with a match finder built in. as long as it runs decent, it will be great to play people from around the world at a game which, for the first time in a long time, I feel i'm deadly at. Bring it on

  8. It can't - DMCA is USA only... by Ron+Harwood · · Score: 1

    ...and this project is based out of Canada.

    --
    BlackNova Traders
  9. Re:Frankly, I'm glad Nintendo doesn't do much onli by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    your mom didn't raise any suckers she must be oh so proud.

    Here is a cookie, take thy trolling elsewhere.

  10. Over thinking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Warp Pipe is over thinking. A simple network-to-network VPN works.

    Fortress of Insanity