0.3.1 works well. We wouldn't release it without testing. The problem you seem to be having is a very common one. It is due to either you or the person you were playing at the time not having port 4000 UDP traffic properly routed to the other side.
Make sure you and your peer have port 4000 (udp and tcp) properly routed if behind routers. Also, if behind a firewall allow access to port 4000 (udp and tcp).
Although I respect your point of view, we announced that we were closing our project over a month ago. If there were more developer interest, we might have remained open source. However, we have a very well balanced team and we work well together.
Will WP be a commerical product - NO. Will WP always remain free - YES.
We were plauged by the same problems on our forum when we announced that we were going closed source. The problem is that popular developer support only comes after much of the code has already been written or after our project had gone closed source. And again, every single person who contributed to the project agreed to go closed source. Nobody was left out in the cold.
First off, Warp Pipe takes full responsibility for our oversights. We were under the impression that since we disabled the "browse cvs" function and changed our project from GPL to a closed source license 2 months ago, that our source was protected. We were wrong.
We also were under the impression that since Source Forge allows you to change your project to a proprietary license, that closed source projects were also allowed. We were also wrong about this, and as soon as we were notified, we pulled the binary releases and started to terminate or relationship with Source Forge, as the code up on CVS represents code that has been protected by a non-GPL license for over a month.
The person who posted the CVS link claimed he wasn't aware that we pulled our release (even after users were complaining about the release missing on our forums). He also was aware that the code had no license attached because it was not meant for public distribution via CVS. He also knew we went closed source over a month ago. This is why I bring up the question of ethics. Yes, we were wrong in assuming that Source Forge supported closed-source projects. However, we were (and still are) in the process of handling this issue with Source Forge. And we could have done so privately without our code being distributed to the public. Something we didn't want to happen.
Also, our decision to go closed source was made by everyone who contributed to the project and we have every right to do so. Nobody was left out in the cold. Every contributor made the decision and they are still contributing to the project. Since this code does not have a license, they should not assume that it is protected under the GPL. As a member of the team who owns the IP, it is not protected by the GPL. You are free to browse, but we do not sanction any forked effort. Please respect our work and our decision to keep our work and source our own. Our whole goal is to provide a great product for the GCN community. If you wish to create your own project, please do so. However, we respectfully ask you to leave our code out of it.
As for the Xlink team, we have made amends. I had a long chat with the Xlink project leader and he has assured me that he respects our IP and he will have nothing to do with it. We discussed some problems we both had tunneling our respective consoles and shared a few good ideas to boot.
So, in the end, everything has been cleared up and this Slashdot posting is a recap and blowup of old news. We take responsibility of our oversight, and we are moving forward. We just ask those of you to respect our IP. If you want to use our code, do the right thing and obtain permission.
As some people have noted, there were traditional tunneling programs for Xbox and Playstation 2. Even PC tunneling programs have been tools for quick and dirty PS2 online gaming.
However, the GameCube uses a "plug and play" protocol called Universal Plug and Play (UPNP). As per my original specification details, the main challenge with bringing the GameCube online was authenticating two GameCubes on two different networks. This is a challange because UPNP broadcasts packets that have a TTL value of only 1. This challange, along with a few others, prompted me to start an open source project in order to enable online play for all LAN based GCN games.
As for the GameSpy speculation, Nintendo has entered into an agreement with GameSpy. However, this agreement is only for middleware which would allow the game to be played online right out of the box. This middleware would be authored by GameSpy and included in various GCN games. The first games with this middleware included are expected to ship early 2004. Specific titles have yet to be announced.
Let's see. No DRM, Unlimited downloads... Who will be the first to offer this? Well, I think that was Hotline, then Napster, many others after, and now kazaa is the hot app these days.
This is not much of a business model. There is no way one, no less all 5 major labels will license their catalogue to a service such as this.
I would totally pay 20 - 50 dollars a month for something like that, but I don't think it is realistic given the entities who hold the keys to the content.
I'm very happy to see Apple taking an aggressive step towards the Windows consumer base.
Many of these users are "stuck", so to say, to this platform and will appreciate this move. Both systems interoperating will also be a benefit for hardcore apple users who are stuck with windoze during work.
I'm really rooting for Apple on this one. They will come to market before Microsoft. This will be interesting to see how Microsoft users react to someone actually coming forward (first, no less) with a product of Apple standards.
I'm glad to see Mario and Luigi is shaping up nicely. I really look forward to Paper Mario coming to the GameCube.
I have always been a "casual RPG fan" (Legend Of Zelda) Super Mario RPG). I really thought Paper Mario was the perfect sequel to the mario RPG series and it looks like Mario and Luigi will take that mindset and run with it.
As for Mario Sunshine, I really enjoyed the gameplay on isle delphino and the fact that you could ride yoshi in 3d. However, I quickly got aggrivated with the multiple hyper platform stages. After a handfull of them they seemed to be the filler of the game and actually dragged down the personality of the game for me. I have faith that Miyamoto's Mario 128 project will be the classic next-gen Mario game we all hoped for.
I'm fairly certain this is supposed to be a humor submission. I have a few ideas as it seems that all of his requirements seem to contradict each other. For instance Microsoft Mail servers (closed technology), Open Source Management Software (open technology), and SCO server authentication (litigious technology). Therefore maybe this "famous person" doesn't exist. Just a theory, but I would be interested to know what it is all about either way.
From personal experience, running a comparison shopping service for both new and preowned console games from NES to Xbox, game sales have been rising sharply.
I have specificly noticed a sharp increase in GameCube and GameBoy Advance click-throughs and purchases in the last two months. I can only speculate that any pending price drop by Nintendo will increase clicks and sales.
Also, many gamers on my site have set price alerts (15 dollars and below) and a large number of Xbox, PS2, and GameCube games. It seems that people really hold out on purchasing games when the price is right.
I plan on adding daily new and preowned price drop information for all games next month and I look forward to watching how gamers react to daily price changes being fed to them.
I think a lot of it has to do with built up inventory. Again, going back to my personal experience with GameFarmer, most GCN games start out at the suggested retail price (on average) and after a month or two they begin to fall considerably.
For example, look at amazing games like Eternal Darkness. Offline and online, the suggested retail price is still $49.99, and its a GREAT game. However, GameStop has SO MUCH inventory, they discounted the game to $14.99. Last time I checked, the game has sold less than 250k units.
Interesting enough, new games from Capcom like Viewtiful Joe and P.N. 03 are getting a 39.99 release price. Maybe they are realizing this price plunge trend and trying to strike a happy medium.
There is no doubt a collective concious between all gamers when it comes to pricing. Gamers all know that sooner or later, all games will fall below the 20 - 30 dollar price range. To offset this, retailers are aggressively pushing new product.
I saw this first hand after recently launching GameFarmer, a service which compares console video game prices and allows users to set price alerts on games in their wishlists. Most gamers purchase preowned or set price alerts on new games right away, many times before they are released in stores.
I think a lot of it also has to do with the fact music sales are slipping and video games are still growing at a very healthy rate. In many cases bridging the lost revenue gap at places such as Wal-Mart and Target (who has an extensive online gaming advertising campaign).
I think we all know that Atari's E.T. pretty much started the whole "movie licensed games are horrible" adage. With over 2 million E.T. games having to be burried underground, it's a wonder the trend continued through the NES all the way up to the 4 generation consoles of today.
In any case, there are some good movie licensed games out there. However, I have yet to play one game that was made especially for a movie that introduced innovative concepts, gameplay, or level design. I think if a developer/ publisher really wants to debunk the myths of movie licensed games, they need to create something a bit more risky than the average platformer/ shooter/ racer.
At first I was not sure, but I am now a big fan of these TV games. I witnessed my father playing video games for the first time since he owned an Atari back in the early 80's during the last holiday season.
I'm, no doubt, going to pick this up for him and I'm sure he'll love it. It's amazing to see that most individuals pick up games fairly quickly, no matter what demographic. I think the true "bottleneck" in games usability is due to the "hook up" and up front hardware cost commitment involved.
Of course the hardcores are going to get upset when they see something like this. I would be pretty upset myself if I spent much of my time and money tracking down rare and used games just in time to find a solution which simply plugs into your TV for 19.95.
Noting in your newspost that Sony will be adopting this technology into the "next generation of PlayStations", I'm going to guess that this means the up and coming PSP.
If that is the case and these handhelds are getting 16 hours of battery life with a solid 30fps, I think (for the first time) Nintendo has something to worry about.
Of course, games will make the processor a bit more busy than keeping your address book updated. Also, the motor for the game disc itself.
It will be an interesting battle regardless. There is only one thing that looks pretty clear to me, the N-gauge is going to be left in the dust.
So the application would have to accept gamecube packets, make a new packet with a larger TTL, send to another gc-app to strip away the outer packet and forward the original packet to the gamecube. Is this (or something similar) what the project would be doing?
Essentially, if there is no other way of authenticating or bypassing UPNP, you are right on the money. This doesn't seem to be a very sleek and fast way of doing things, but keep in mind that UPNP authentication is a VERY small part of the process.
The rest of the UDP packets (the raw game data) have TTL values of 255. They can be easily tunneled, forwarded, etc. They could also be converted into a series of TCP socket streams over the net. I saw this open source (I think it was in JAVA) Quake tunnel program which opened 30 sockets and kept sending TCP packets via one of the random sockets. The theory behind this was that the unused connections wouldn't take up any resources. The program is very fast and the solution works very well.
Again, the UPNP authentication is the problem. Everything after that is much more reasonable to deal with.
Valid points, and I mentioned the possible GameSpy deal with Nintendo in the project's mission statement. However, color me a skeptic, I'll beleive it when I see it.
Even if GameSpy does come up with something, I doubt that it will be free forever. This is just one of the things that makes open source great. As long as we are focused, we can pull out a great solution which will benefit us all in the long term.
Yes, a custom routing application is one of the possible solutions to this problem. Latency is always a problem when it comes to tunneling LAN games over a WAN. Therefore, whatever solution is sorted out, it must focus on speed and as little overhead as possible.
Right now Kirby's Air Ride (JPN release only, US release in October) is the only LAN game to date.
The big push is to get this software project at least to beta (if not stable) status by the time Super Mario Kart: Double Dash hits stores at the end of the year.
We tried this application, but as you can tell from the specification it does not work. A series of limitations are imposed by the fact that all the UPNP packets have a TTL value of one. Therefore cannot be tunneled. Also, keep in mind that all the UPNP packets have internal IP address information in them and need to be either translated or there needs to be a work around when it comes to authenticating over UPNP.
Slashdot Mirror
Although this is true, it is also a lay man's way of saying that ping is the factor when it comes to lag.
When playing Mario Kart, a ping of 30ms or lower will allow you to run a flawless game.
When playing 1080: Avalanche, a ping of 45ms or lower will allow you to run a flawless game.
The jury is still out on Kirby AirRide.
0.3.1 works well. We wouldn't release it without testing. The problem you seem to be having is a very common one. It is due to either you or the person you were playing at the time not having port 4000 UDP traffic properly routed to the other side.
Make sure you and your peer have port 4000 (udp and tcp) properly routed if behind routers. Also, if behind a firewall allow access to port 4000 (udp and tcp).
Although I respect your point of view, we announced that we were closing our project over a month ago. If there were more developer interest, we might have remained open source. However, we have a very well balanced team and we work well together.
Will WP be a commerical product - NO.
Will WP always remain free - YES.
We were plauged by the same problems on our forum when we announced that we were going closed source. The problem is that popular developer support only comes after much of the code has already been written or after our project had gone closed source. And again, every single person who contributed to the project agreed to go closed source. Nobody was left out in the cold.
First off, Warp Pipe takes full responsibility for our oversights. We were under the impression that since we disabled the "browse cvs" function and changed our project from GPL to a closed source license 2 months ago, that our source was protected. We were wrong.
We also were under the impression that since Source Forge allows you to change your project to a proprietary license, that closed source projects were also allowed. We were also wrong about this, and as soon as we were notified, we pulled the binary releases and started to terminate or relationship with Source Forge, as the code up on CVS represents code that has been protected by a non-GPL license for over a month.
The person who posted the CVS link claimed he wasn't aware that we pulled our release (even after users were complaining about the release missing on our forums). He also was aware that the code had no license attached because it was not meant for public distribution via CVS. He also knew we went closed source over a month ago. This is why I bring up the question of ethics. Yes, we were wrong in assuming that Source Forge supported closed-source projects. However, we were (and still are) in the process of handling this issue with Source Forge. And we could have done so privately without our code being distributed to the public. Something we didn't want to happen.
Also, our decision to go closed source was made by everyone who contributed to the project and we have every right to do so. Nobody was left out in the cold. Every contributor made the decision and they are still contributing to the project. Since this code does not have a license, they should not assume that it is protected under the GPL. As a member of the team who owns the IP, it is not protected by the GPL. You are free to browse, but we do not sanction any forked effort. Please respect our work and our decision to keep our work and source our own. Our whole goal is to provide a great product for the GCN community. If you wish to create your own project, please do so. However, we respectfully ask you to leave our code out of it.
As for the Xlink team, we have made amends. I had a long chat with the Xlink project leader and he has assured me that he respects our IP and he will have nothing to do with it. We discussed some problems we both had tunneling our respective consoles and shared a few good ideas to boot.
So, in the end, everything has been cleared up and this Slashdot posting is a recap and blowup of old news. We take responsibility of our oversight, and we are moving forward. We just ask those of you to respect our IP. If you want to use our code, do the right thing and obtain permission.
As some people have noted, there were traditional tunneling programs for Xbox and Playstation 2. Even PC tunneling programs have been tools for quick and dirty PS2 online gaming.
However, the GameCube uses a "plug and play" protocol called Universal Plug and Play (UPNP). As per my original specification details, the main challenge with bringing the GameCube online was authenticating two GameCubes on two different networks. This is a challange because UPNP broadcasts packets that have a TTL value of only 1. This challange, along with a few others, prompted me to start an open source project in order to enable online play for all LAN based GCN games.
As for the GameSpy speculation, Nintendo has entered into an agreement with GameSpy. However, this agreement is only for middleware which would allow the game to be played online right out of the box. This middleware would be authored by GameSpy and included in various GCN games. The first games with this middleware included are expected to ship early 2004. Specific titles have yet to be announced.
Let's see. No DRM, Unlimited downloads... Who will be the first to offer this? Well, I think that was Hotline, then Napster, many others after, and now kazaa is the hot app these days.
This is not much of a business model. There is no way one, no less all 5 major labels will license their catalogue to a service such as this.
I would totally pay 20 - 50 dollars a month for something like that, but I don't think it is realistic given the entities who hold the keys to the content.
I'm very happy to see Apple taking an aggressive step towards the Windows consumer base. Many of these users are "stuck", so to say, to this platform and will appreciate this move. Both systems interoperating will also be a benefit for hardcore apple users who are stuck with windoze during work. I'm really rooting for Apple on this one. They will come to market before Microsoft. This will be interesting to see how Microsoft users react to someone actually coming forward (first, no less) with a product of Apple standards.
I'm glad to see Mario and Luigi is shaping up nicely. I really look forward to Paper Mario coming to the GameCube.
I have always been a "casual RPG fan" (Legend Of Zelda) Super Mario RPG). I really thought Paper Mario was the perfect sequel to the mario RPG series and it looks like Mario and Luigi will take that mindset and run with it.
As for Mario Sunshine, I really enjoyed the gameplay on isle delphino and the fact that you could ride yoshi in 3d. However, I quickly got aggrivated with the multiple hyper platform stages. After a handfull of them they seemed to be the filler of the game and actually dragged down the personality of the game for me. I have faith that Miyamoto's Mario 128 project will be the classic next-gen Mario game we all hoped for.
I'm fairly certain this is supposed to be a humor submission. I have a few ideas as it seems that all of his requirements seem to contradict each other. For instance Microsoft Mail servers (closed technology), Open Source Management Software (open technology), and SCO server authentication (litigious technology). Therefore maybe this "famous person" doesn't exist. Just a theory, but I would be interested to know what it is all about either way.
From personal experience, running a comparison shopping service for both new and preowned console games from NES to Xbox, game sales have been rising sharply.
I have specificly noticed a sharp increase in GameCube and GameBoy Advance click-throughs and purchases in the last two months. I can only speculate that any pending price drop by Nintendo will increase clicks and sales.
Also, many gamers on my site have set price alerts (15 dollars and below) and a large number of Xbox, PS2, and GameCube games. It seems that people really hold out on purchasing games when the price is right.
I plan on adding daily new and preowned price drop information for all games next month and I look forward to watching how gamers react to daily price changes being fed to them.
I think a lot of it has to do with built up inventory. Again, going back to my personal experience with GameFarmer, most GCN games start out at the suggested retail price (on average) and after a month or two they begin to fall considerably.
For example, look at amazing games like Eternal Darkness. Offline and online, the suggested retail price is still $49.99, and its a GREAT game. However, GameStop has SO MUCH inventory, they discounted the game to $14.99. Last time I checked, the game has sold less than 250k units.
Interesting enough, new games from Capcom like Viewtiful Joe and P.N. 03 are getting a 39.99 release price. Maybe they are realizing this price plunge trend and trying to strike a happy medium.
There is no doubt a collective concious between all gamers when it comes to pricing. Gamers all know that sooner or later, all games will fall below the 20 - 30 dollar price range. To offset this, retailers are aggressively pushing new product.
I saw this first hand after recently launching GameFarmer, a service which compares console video game prices and allows users to set price alerts on games in their wishlists. Most gamers purchase preowned or set price alerts on new games right away, many times before they are released in stores.
I think a lot of it also has to do with the fact music sales are slipping and video games are still growing at a very healthy rate. In many cases bridging the lost revenue gap at places such as Wal-Mart and Target (who has an extensive online gaming advertising campaign).
I think we all know that Atari's E.T. pretty much started the whole "movie licensed games are horrible" adage. With over 2 million E.T. games having to be burried underground, it's a wonder the trend continued through the NES all the way up to the 4 generation consoles of today.
In any case, there are some good movie licensed games out there. However, I have yet to play one game that was made especially for a movie that introduced innovative concepts, gameplay, or level design. I think if a developer/ publisher really wants to debunk the myths of movie licensed games, they need to create something a bit more risky than the average platformer/ shooter/ racer.
At first I was not sure, but I am now a big fan of these TV games. I witnessed my father playing video games for the first time since he owned an Atari back in the early 80's during the last holiday season.
I'm, no doubt, going to pick this up for him and I'm sure he'll love it. It's amazing to see that most individuals pick up games fairly quickly, no matter what demographic. I think the true "bottleneck" in games usability is due to the "hook up" and up front hardware cost commitment involved.
Of course the hardcores are going to get upset when they see something like this. I would be pretty upset myself if I spent much of my time and money tracking down rare and used games just in time to find a solution which simply plugs into your TV for 19.95.
Noting in your newspost that Sony will be adopting this technology into the "next generation of PlayStations", I'm going to guess that this means the up and coming PSP. If that is the case and these handhelds are getting 16 hours of battery life with a solid 30fps, I think (for the first time) Nintendo has something to worry about. Of course, games will make the processor a bit more busy than keeping your address book updated. Also, the motor for the game disc itself. It will be an interesting battle regardless. There is only one thing that looks pretty clear to me, the N-gauge is going to be left in the dust.
So the application would have to accept gamecube packets, make a new packet with a larger TTL, send to another gc-app to strip away the outer packet and forward the original packet to the gamecube. Is this (or something similar) what the project would be doing? Essentially, if there is no other way of authenticating or bypassing UPNP, you are right on the money. This doesn't seem to be a very sleek and fast way of doing things, but keep in mind that UPNP authentication is a VERY small part of the process. The rest of the UDP packets (the raw game data) have TTL values of 255. They can be easily tunneled, forwarded, etc. They could also be converted into a series of TCP socket streams over the net. I saw this open source (I think it was in JAVA) Quake tunnel program which opened 30 sockets and kept sending TCP packets via one of the random sockets. The theory behind this was that the unused connections wouldn't take up any resources. The program is very fast and the solution works very well. Again, the UPNP authentication is the problem. Everything after that is much more reasonable to deal with.
Valid points, and I mentioned the possible GameSpy deal with Nintendo in the project's mission statement. However, color me a skeptic, I'll beleive it when I see it. Even if GameSpy does come up with something, I doubt that it will be free forever. This is just one of the things that makes open source great. As long as we are focused, we can pull out a great solution which will benefit us all in the long term.
Yes, a custom routing application is one of the possible solutions to this problem. Latency is always a problem when it comes to tunneling LAN games over a WAN. Therefore, whatever solution is sorted out, it must focus on speed and as little overhead as possible.
Right now Kirby's Air Ride (JPN release only, US release in October) is the only LAN game to date. The big push is to get this software project at least to beta (if not stable) status by the time Super Mario Kart: Double Dash hits stores at the end of the year.
We tried this application, but as you can tell from the specification it does not work. A series of limitations are imposed by the fact that all the UPNP packets have a TTL value of one. Therefore cannot be tunneled. Also, keep in mind that all the UPNP packets have internal IP address information in them and need to be either translated or there needs to be a work around when it comes to authenticating over UPNP.