How do we enable netplay with this?

[beingretrogamer]

Hi @arianrhodsandlot , thanks for the amazing work mate! Really loving building with this and the flexibility that I am getting coming from EmulatorJS bg. I am building out a prototype using this and would like to learn more on how can we integrate/netplay using this. I skimmed through the code and found a few refs but would like to see if there is a tutorial out or something.

Best,
Mudit

[arianrhodsandlot]

We don't support netplay as it's too complicated and seems to require a lot of effort to make it work properly for various scenarios. I'm not even sure whether it's possible to build netplay (especially the native netplay feature built in with RetroArch) on top of this library tbh 😟
If you still want to try, I'm willing too provide detailed information for whatever you'd like to know about this project.

[beingretrogamer]

I did some digging and was able to do a quick POC on making a spectator mode via WebRTC with no sound and it works. From where i came up with WebRTC?- here - https://emulatorjs.org/docs4devs/netplay

Original Netplay is not supported so we would have to do a lot of Custom WebRTC to send out the audio, key strokes and all. I am trying to do a timeboxed POC to add this as a first class feature in nostalgist With Opus but not getting anywhere other than burning a hell lot of tokens haha!

I will update in this thread when I have a PR with something working.

Thanks for getting back.

[sxw-18]

I did some digging and was able to do a quick POC on making a spectator mode via WebRTC with no sound and it works. From where i came up with WebRTC?- here - https://emulatorjs.org/docs4devs/netplay

Original Netplay is not supported so we would have to do a lot of Custom WebRTC to send out the audio, key strokes and all. I am trying to do a timeboxed POC to add this as a first class feature in nostalgist With Opus but not getting anywhere other than burning a hell lot of tokens haha!

I will update in this thread when I have a PR with something working.

Thanks for getting back.

I'm also super stoked about the online battle feature! At least they could make an NES-style online battle. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the pros can come up with using this library!

[bangnokia]

I've already implemented netplay functionality in my retro gaming service using WebRTC. However, reliable WebRTC netplay requires a TURN server (for NAT traversal) and a dedicated signaling/socket server, both of which incur ongoing costs. I don't believe provisioning and maintaining this infrastructure should fall within the scope of this project.

Additionally, while WebRTC-based netplay works well (typically ~100ms latency, significantly better on LAN), it cannot achieve the ultra-low latency of RetroArch's approach. RetroArch's netplay uses a lockstep method that only exchanges player inputs (with rollback for desync correction), which is far more efficient for frame-perfect synchronization. Except we can proxy the webrtc datachannel to Netplay socket, or anything else, idk much about C stuff

For reference, RetroArch relies on their own libretro-hosted lobby and relay servers — something the team might not have noticed when comparing implementations.

[sxw-18]

I've already implemented netplay functionality in my retro gaming service using WebRTC. However, reliable WebRTC netplay requires a TURN server (for NAT traversal) and a dedicated signaling/socket server, both of which incur ongoing costs. I don't believe provisioning and maintaining this infrastructure should fall within the scope of this project.

Additionally, while WebRTC-based netplay works well (typically ~100ms latency, significantly better on LAN), it cannot achieve the ultra-low latency of RetroArch's approach. RetroArch's netplay uses a lockstep method that only exchanges player inputs (with rollback for desync correction), which is far more efficient for frame-perfect synchronization. Except we can proxy the webrtc datachannel to Netplay socket, or anything else, idk much about C stuff

For reference, RetroArch relies on their own libretro-hosted lobby and relay servers — something the team might not have noticed when comparing implementations.

Excuse me, could you kindly provide your online warehouse for me to learn from? I can set up my own TURN server to play. Thank you so much! You can also send me a private message.

[bangnokia]

@sxw-18 sorry it's not public yet, but the approach is same as netplay from Emulator js https://emulatorjs.org/docs4devs/netplay/
You can try at rebit[dot]cc (still WIP lots of stuff to fix and this is not open source) sorry I can not DM on Github

[sxw-18]

@sxw-18 sorry it's not public yet, but the approach is same as netplay from Emulator js https://emulatorjs.org/docs4devs/netplay/ You can try at rebit[dot]cc (still WIP lots of stuff to fix and this is not open source) sorry I can not DM on Github

Okay, thanks. I'm gonna check out this library.