Sonic 3 & Knuckles online question!

im thinking of playing this game on emulator ONLINE with one of my friends, and im wondering - we planned too play it like that: He plays 1 act while i WAIT and watch him play - and act 2 i will be the one playing it and he will rest and watch me!
Is this even possible - if not - did anyone tried too play it online together at the same time while tails 2nd player and sonic the 1 player?
But Tails can only follow sonic and not lead right ?
Is there any way that player stop playing as tails and leave me too finish the act and join in back on next akt?:?:

Hmm I dont know why don't you guys try it out? It really doesn't sound like it would work but again why not just try it out and see what happens.

This is how you should do it, get a program where you can view the other persons desktop, ie they can take control of your computer and thats basically it, you'd be playing it off the same comp.

Otherwise pass the save state back and forth after each level, that would be another good option.

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Originally Posted by megabomberman

This is how you should do it, get a program where you can view the other persons desktop, ie they can take control of your computer and thats basically it, you'd be playing it off the same comp.

Otherwise pass the save state back and forth after each level, that would be another good option.

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That will never work, over the internet that would refresh the screen once every 9 seconds most likely...

Why don't you guys just go out and play IN PERSON? I mean, you can't enjoy these games without actually BEING THERE..

I was actually going to ask you evil d, I knew you'd know about it, i'm fairly sure I've seen it before though, For example whenever we're having technical difficulties at work we just ring up the IT crowd and they link up with our computers, we sit back and bam the mouse starts moving itself (well they do from wherever they are) and they sort out the problem, how come that couldn't work for emulators?

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Originally Posted by megabomberman

I was actually going to ask you evil d, I knew you'd know about it, i'm fairly sure I've seen it before though, For example whenever we're having technical difficulties at work we just ring up the IT crowd and they link up with our computers, we sit back and bam the mouse starts moving itself (well they do from wherever they are) and they sort out the problem, how come that couldn't work for emulators?

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The video is sent as raw bitmaps usually, and the only compression is usually HexTile.. The transfer rate required to get even 30fps would be about a gigabit NIC.. Even with a 100MB NIC, the video usually can only max out at about 5fps..

Also for emulators, most these days try their best to accelerate the video, and use D3D or OpenGL, or even Video Overlay, something not tied down by the CPU.. (KEGA Fusion for example).. Because of this, to those programs, there's just simply no video to be captured, as it's not in the framebuffer, and is somewhere else.. Some emulators use the framebuffer and can be seen..

But once again, there's the frame rate issue.. Then to top it off, there's a significant ammount of lag too..

VNC, Terminal Services, etc, were really designed for IT, like you mentioned.. Not for gaming.. That's why it's never been improved..

Right so just to clarify...I'm not computer savvy, would it be possible to view someone playing an emulator even with an awful framerate and lag, or would that be completely impossible, as in no picture would show up?

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Originally Posted by megabomberman

Right so just to clarify...I'm not computer savvy, would it be possible to view someone playing an emulator even with an awful framerate and lag, or would that be completely impossible, as in no picture would show up?

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you could watch, only if the emulator uses a framebuffer.. that may slow down the local screen though, CPU usage climbing, and the VGA card being accessed all the time, while the DAC and GPU are trying to output to the screen..

(in the old days, this would be just snowy graphics, like when the VGA palette was changed.. these days it's just skipping graphics)

So i guess if the guys are willing to go through all that as a viewer, you could have one guy play a level while the other guy watched during these atrocious conditions, but it could still be ok if they were talking through skype etc whilst this was happening,

Then they could pass the save state over to the other guy and hey presto,

Although i do agree with your earlier comment why not just be in the same room.

yea, that would work, state saving and stuff... i still think it's just too complicated, and they should either go in the same room, or use the games netplay feature.. that only shares the RAM between computers, and thus a LOT faster (128KB RAM total, including VRAM?)

That does seem like a better solution alright,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by megabomberman

So i guess if the guys are willing to go through all that as a viewer, you could have one guy play a level while the other guy watched during these atrocious conditions, but it could still be ok if they were talking through skype etc whilst this was happening,

Then they could pass the save state over to the other guy and hey presto,

Although i do agree with your earlier comment why not just be in the same room.

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WE cant be in the same room hes too far away - i use kega emulator , its really good when it comes online, no frame issues with other games like mortal kombat online we have no issues playing it - but we tried playing the sonic and when he pressed start as tails and wanted too join in, at that moment emulator lost the con and he was playing totaly different locations in the game as the ones i saw on my screen on my side!

Then you two have different ROM dumps... You both need to have the same ROM.. Sometimes there's different revisions of the same game.. (Sonic 2, for example, has two revisions.. The first one had a bug in the Chemical Plant level, where you could actually walk THROUGH a wall and skip half the level...)

No no, i sent him my rom, we used same ones - can tails play and in the next act if player 2 stop playing, will tail eventualy auto follow - i tried, i dont see its working!

You should NEVER see different things.. The netplay function works by sharing RAM contents between systems.. Thus, you both should see the exact same thing..

Is he using the same emulator? (version, etc)