Supermodel Forum

Ian wrote:

Nice to hear 3-way and 4-way link-ups are working well for you! As to the issue of only the emulator in focus picking up inputs, I'm not exactly sure as to the cause of that since I haven't changed anything regarding inputs; perhaps it's just the way Visual Studio is building the executables. I'll take a look at it and see if I can figure it out.

Key presses normally are only sent to the active or top window in windows. Otherwise pressing buttons would make all the background apps go crazy. Other than hooking the keyboard input (which you can do in the win32 api) this is basically by design. But I am sure most people if they are playing network will be running on separate pcs.

It's joypad inputs I'm specifically referring to here Ian, not the keyboard, a feature the old network supported for single PC play.

I set up several single PC multiplayer games using the old network with me and two other friends all using pads - you can see it working here in a 3P game of Daytona 2 https://youtu.be/d0cyyaqYes8 and Scud Race https://youtu.be/wOdIg9gTl5M

This worked right from the onset with the old version of the network. I was also able to set multiple versions of the emulator to all respond to one single pad - I'm controlling 6 versions of Scud Race off the one pad in this video: https://youtu.be/Je2_LdCyi34
In the new network builds, I need to actually click on one of the emulators for it to pick up what my pad's doing and doing this will then make any other version of Supermodel that are open no longer respond, regardless of whether they're set up as Joypad 1 or 2.

Not sure. Using xinput? Maybe wasn't compiled with support for it

Ian wrote:Not sure. Using xinput? Maybe wasn't compiled with support for it

Nope dinput. In the videos me and my friends were using 3 PS3 Dualshock 3 pads using DS3 tool to make them work on PC in the first place. This is the same input method I'm using for the new network.

I'm hoping that possibly Spindizzi might be able to offer some input on this as (I believe) he was the person who compiled those early network builds where the multi-input feature worked.

edit. I was talking nonsense.

Ian wrote:Not sure. Using xinput? Maybe wasn't compiled with support for it

Arrgh. Your comment just finally made my brain start working... although we were using dinput controllers, I'd set them to behave as if they were xinput controllers in DS3 tool. Because of the fact I'd had issues correctly setting up my gas and brake when I very first set up this new version of the network build, I'd changed the controller back to dinput. I just swapped back to Xinput and the multi-emulator inputs are working again now. Shite, sorry about that - my bad

Glad you got it sorted. Xinput from what I recall will work regardless of what the top window is.

I wonder if net play is possible. If the memory passed around is just a lump of shared memory, what if it is updated say every 2 frames. 2 frames is 30ms, fast enough for most Internet. Maybe asynchronous network code can make this possible

OMG i'm so excited I'm going to squeeze my eyes shut and open them and it's going to be Christmas!

Seriously though, amazing work here. The emulator itself has always been great, and this is possibly the icing on the cake. Thank you, gm_matthew. Is there a donations page?

I must ask - to configure for different computers you'd do the same as for Model 2? So set the cabinet ID in the game's service menu, then in the supermodel.ini put the ports back to the same as the master machine, but change the IP's to a loop? So the supermodel.ini for the master machine lists the IP of machine 2, the supermodel.ini of machine 2 lists the IP of machine 3, etc, until the supermodel.ini of the final machine in the ring lists the IP of the master machine again?

Speaking of which... would this same trick work with M2Emu? Would you need the sourcecode? Sailorsat only got so far with her attempts, but i do remember her talking about the fact different games on the hardware networked in slightly different ways. She might have something to say about these developments at any rate

check the source, I added some async tcp send/receive functions

MATTHEW COME TO DISCORD, I WANT YOU TO MARRY MY SISTER!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHo6RQiUhao ---------8x linked on 1 pc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG0JVzuKXGg ---------16x linked on 1 pc



SUPERMODEL
https://discord.gg/64Hg2v8t

Holy shit! That's insane my PC was starting to struggle with 4 versions open. You must have an absolute beast of a setup. Outstanding work! FYI, if you want to organise your screens more easily on the desktop, just minimise all the cmd prompt Windows that open, minimise all the GUI's you've got open, then right click down in the task bar to the right of your open windows, and you'll get an option to arrange the open windows side-by-side.

Looking forward to seeing the inevitable video of someone doing a 16 PC setup...