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GameCube (Games) Entertainment Games

Warp Pipe Project - GameCube Online 167

Posted by simoniker from the console-hack-du-jour dept.
chadlnx writes "The Warp Pipe Project, an open source project to bring LAN-based GameCube games online, recently released a specification detailing how GameCubes communicate over a network. The Warp Pipe Project is aggressively seeking out developers who would be interested in this project through its SourceForge project page."
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Warp Pipe Project - GameCube Online More

Warp Pipe Project - GameCube Online

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  • Increased interest... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Endareth ( 684446 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:43AM (#6468550) Journal
    Along with dropping prices, this sort of info can really incline people to getting a GameCube! /me digs around in his pocket for some spare change :-)

  • They should use OS/2 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:45AM (#6468553)
    And call it the OS/2 Warp Pipe Project.

  • crap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:47AM (#6468563) Homepage
    Its exactly what nintendo wants (network without having to risk dollars to in), but being Nintendo, I can't imagine them being friendly to this group.

    • Re:crap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by duffhuff ( 688339 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @02:25AM (#6468702)
      They may go after these guys, but I doubt it. Remember that Gamespy mod for Halo which allowed internet play (albiet slowly)?. Microsoft didn't touch those guys (to my knowledge). While what these guys are doing isn't quite as simple as a firewall hack, I don't see how Nintendo can do anything about it. Unless, that is, they use some "magic" encryption on their connection...

      • Re:crap (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ecchi_0 ( 647240 )
        According to the article, they use Universal Plug and Play to detect other gamecubes on the network. This is hard to route over the internet, but if they figure out a way to do it I don't think there is anything stopping them from releasing it.

        • Re:crap (Score:3, Interesting)

          by ergonal ( 609484 )
          Doesn't MSN Messenger use UPnP to directly connect to people? (ie. to transfer files, etc)

        • Re:crap (Score:4, Interesting)

          by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @04:28AM (#6469000) Homepage
          You cannot route it period. It is multicast. 239.x.x.x. If it had a TTL of more then 1 you could pass it across a hop with multicast routing configured.

          This leaves two alternatives:

          1. Mangle packets and alter TTL and have a working multicast network (Yeah... in my dreams).

          2. Bridge.

          Option 2 should just work (TM).
          • Ding ding ding! We have a winner. =)

            The same old bridge over IP technology used to extend old Novell networks over the internet will do this. I have seen a few IP over IP bridges as well. I imagine the easiest implementation would be layer-2 bridging, if I only owned a second Cisco 2600 I could test the theory. Perhaps a Cisco 2600 to my freebsd box.

            Simply isolate your cube on its own segement a layer-2 bridge the segment. Poof. I just wonder if latency will be an issue for uPnP...
          • You forgot the creative approach :-)

            If you have a PC on the GameCube network, it should be easy for it to cache the list of gamecubes in it's local area.

            From here, you just need a bit of software to "register" those gamecubes with some Internet registery (a central server of PC-represented gamecube networks). The server can then give PC's information on the available other networks and gamecubes in them based on pings, etc. The PC will have to select which ones it wants to play with based on user prefer

            • Re:crap (Score:3, Interesting)

              by ZorinLynx ( 31751 )
              Didn't a company once create software called "Kali" (or similar) that did this, but with IPX packets?

              Back in the early-to-mid-90's, nearly all online games used IPX for multiplayer (it was popular on corporate LANs at the time, apparently), so this Kali software would basically create IPX tunnels over the Internet, with a central registry, and even a chat system, so people could get together and play IPX-only games like Doom and Descent over the net.

              I remember using it for a while; it was damn clever. I s
              • Kali did exist, it was used exactly as you mentioned. I tried it a couple times and it seemed to work farily well. As for how it worked, I haven't a clue. Since each machine had it's own Kali install (as I remember it), the proxy would be local to each machine if that's indeed how it worked. For the gamecubes, you would have one machine managing multiple cube connections. There may be a latency bias between cubes on the same network and ones on remote networks because of that in my scenario

                However, if

  • God bless you dorms (Score:4, Informative)

    by KU_Fletch ( 678324 ) <bthomas1NO@SPAMku.edu> on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:48AM (#6468564)
    What should be really interesting will be if our dorm hookup (which already recognizes everybody in the building as being on the same LAN) works with the Gamecube LAN setup. It didn't work with X-Box as we had hoped, but with a little bit of X-Box piping help, we had some great inter-room/floor fights in Halo. The thought of doing the same with Mario Kart fills me with oh so much glee.

    • Re:God bless you dorms (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      dorms are not for video games, they are for drinking like hobos and fucking like rabbits.. now, get to it
    • Doubtful...you'll probably have to tunnel Mario Karl just like you did with Halo. At my dorm, we had no trouble getting Halo to play with anyone else in the dorm. Something to do with the config of the network, no doubt...

  • Warp Pipe? (Score:3, Funny)

    by cliffy2000 ( 185461 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:50AM (#6468582) Journal
    Didn't Tommy Chong (of "Cheech and Chong" and "That 70s Show" fame) just get arrested for selling those?

  • Cool logo! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:51AM (#6468584) Homepage Journal
    Man, that is a cool logo: the eternet plug as the hole in a Mario pipe. More open source projects need good designers to come up with eye catching logos like this. This may get modded off-topic, but oh well, I've got karma to burn. I went to the site and said, "Damn, that is cool." Anyone else agree?

  • Great ! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Blaskowicz ( 634489 )
    With this thing, GameCube's Ethernet adaptor won't be called "Broaband adaptor" for nothing anymore :)
  • Hope it doesnt turn out like Loki... The open source community can sure do a lot for the Console gaming industry. But if I buy a game cube, will this be around to produce games worthy of playing?
    • I think the point here is to allow two gamecubes that are remote from each other to play existing networked games together. So instead of only being able to play WarBlaster III with your friend if you go over to his house, you could set it up so that you could play from your own homes.
  • It's going to take something completely revolutionary to make me buy a new console. The multiplayer is still in it's infancy. I love to see things like this though... it's tempting.

  • Gamer's Internet Tunnel (Score:5, Informative)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:58AM (#6468618) Homepage
    I found this Gamer's Internet Tunnel program a while back when attempting to play Starcraft without going through battle.net:

    http://www.morpheussoftware.net/git/

    It listens for almost any kind of traffic on a network, and relays it over TCP or UDP to another network, allowing LAN-only games to be played across the Internet. It might even work with GameCubes if you put a PC on the same LAN as one or more of them.
    • I've been looking for a program like this for over 3 years.

      Thank you so much for pointing it out to me.
    • 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.
      • Why can't a custom routing program be written that tunnels all packets with a TTL of 1 and spits them out with a TTL of 1 still?

        would latency be the only problem? or is there some fundamental reason IP packets can't be read, changed, and fowarded on? I mean don't routers already read and change some fields of the header?
        • 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.
          • 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?
            • 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.
  • since Nintendo in general has a bunch of games specifically designed for groups (Goldeneye anyone?)being able to network the games just seems like the right thing to do. I'm too cheap to buy one though.
    too bad all I play are rhythm games and rpg's on my console.

  • Nintendo haxors getting in on it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @01:59AM (#6468623)
    It's good to see the Gamecube haxors getting in on the fun. I was thinking about which one I would rather buy, a GameCube or XBox the other day, and the main thing that makes me lean towards the Xbox is the better network support. Now, maybe, I'll wait out a see what these guys can do.
    • I'm looking forward to this, but let's be real, it's not going to even come close to Xbox Live.

      Nintendo needs to remove their head from the sand and actually do something with online gaming themselves.

      Online Mario Kart? Online F-Zero? I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

    • I bought a GameCube a few months ago and love it. They've got a broadband adapter, but only one online game so far: Fantasy Star Online.

      XBox developers and Microsoft have embraced online gaming as a big piece of the future of console gaming. Nintendo still needs to come around. I'm hoping that catch up (I think Microsoft & Co. are right!)

      The hardware's ready when they are!

  • A lot of aggression... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @02:03AM (#6468639)
    This seems to be turning out to be a pretty aggressive project...

    From the abstract [sourceforge.net]:

    Once the cube has given out a series of 8 NOTIFY packets, it begins to aggressively search for other GameCubes on the network by sending out standard UPNP M-SEARCH packets (also on port 1900 with a TTL value of 1).
    From the weblog [gamefarmer.com]:
    As soon as I publish my findings, the specification of the protocol Nintendo is using, and a few suggestions about what needs to be done to bridge two LANs together (a simple tunnel will not do), I will be aggressively recruiting developers.
    From this Slashdot story:
    The Warp Pipe Project is aggressively seeking out developers who would be interested in this project through its SourceForge project page."
    I would be afraid to work with these guys...

  • But... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by binarytoaster ( 174681 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @02:20AM (#6468679)
    which games on the GCN are LAN-only as of now? It's a great idea, but the only game that comes to mind is PSO, and that *has* to be online. So could someone fill me in on which games are LAN-only? I remember reading in EGM about one that could support 16-player mode with the LAN, but that's about it..

    • Re:But... (Score:2, Informative)

      by chadlnx ( 686255 )
      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.
    • Mario Kart is going to be a LAN game.... That's all I have heard about, though. Nintendo really needs to get on the ball and make some online games. Imagine online Smash Bros....

      • Imagine online Smash Bros....

        Imagine the latency. Super Smash Bros. Melee is a twitch game just as much as Quake III: Arena ever was, and Q3A's target market is older and richer and thus more likely to have high-speed Internet access than Smash Bros.'s target market.

    • Re:But... (Score:3, Funny)

      by MrLint ( 519792 )
      it would be great to visit other online towns in animal crossing 2:)

      and then deforest the town as a free service:)
      • You know, I was talking with a couple of my friends about that and we came up with a really cool way to allow online town visiting and still prevent people from deforesting your town...

        A central chat channel (maybe divided) and friend-lists. (I didn't say it was anything new.) Basically you'd talk for a while and you could allow people into your town, presumably only people you trusted. Alternately there could be ways to not allow people to cut the trees etc in your town unless you gave them permission :)
        • yeah i was talking to a friend also, basically im thinking this, you play a copy of the town you are in locally, with some traffic for other visitors. you have porter hold your axe while you visit (non residents only). Nooks would have to restock. if the host town goes offline nooks closes up, and you can play the game in 'local' mode unti you decide to go home.

          Only problem left if item dulpication of things left on the ground.

          I suppose someone could maliciously fill up the dump.
          • I kinda liked the idea of multiple people in the town at the same time, though. But Porter holding your axe at the door sounds great. Needs to hold your shovel, too... (If you're trying for perfect balance, remember that too many trees will throw you out of whack just as much as too few)

            Item duping is already simple. For the transferrable items, you can create a new town and make codes for it, then enter them multiple times. For nontransferrable ones, putting them on your island and then visiting that isla
    • Right now Kirby's Airride is it.
    • only game that comes to mind is PSO, and that *has* to be online

      With 70+ hours of offline play, tell my friend that.
      • Sorry, I should have said that better. I mean that it isn't LAN, because that doesn't work. It has to be online.

        I know very well it's offline too; I still have a couple DC characters that had more than half their time offline. (But my FOmarl has HUGE problems in Hard Ruins still... stupid lv58... I haven't played in so long :p)
    • Super Monkey Ball 3 is also going to be LAN playable.
  • Ever since I heard Mario Kart Double Dash would be LAN playable, I figured someone would try to make something like this for the GC.

    Now with Kirby's Air Ride, Mario Kart, and hopefully other titles (too bad F-Zero won't have it, that would have kicked major ass), there may be a reason to get the broadband adaptor from Nintendo.

    Let's just hope it works better than XBConnect. I had a lot of problems with that, but I also haven't tried more recent version, so mayby it's gotten better.

    Thursdæ

  • Gamespy doing this too (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MaverickUW ( 177871 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @02:38AM (#6468729)
    I'm not sure if people realized, but quite a while ago, Gamespy and Nintendo reached a development agreement. The idea was that Nintendo would give gamespy full access to how the LAN play on gamecube worked with the network architecture information, and in return, Gamespy would create a tunnel code and set up their own servers to arrage games (much like they do for everything else and Halo) for gamers to find eachother over the net and play online over broadband connections.

    See, that's what bugs me when everyone says that Nintendo doesn't have an online strategy. At least with Nintendo's strategy of giving gamespy the information in return for creating the software (though technically unsupported) is very smart. Online gaming ability, only ever costing the consumer $35 out of pocket specifically (for the broadband adaptor) where as the consumer never has to pay the cost of developing online cost for a game, a monthly service charge to access a game, and no yearly charge to have online features.

    If this turns out to be very popular and used by millions of gamecube owners, then Nintendo will put in the effort to do something of their own. Nintendo isn't stupid, and knows that just throwing money at a fad won't help anything. If they see through the gamespy system, or one like the one done by small groups, then Nintendo will have more incentive to put the effort in to give people the Nintendo Experience in an online format.

    • Re:Gamespy doing this too (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chadlnx ( 686255 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @02:42AM (#6468738) Homepage Journal
      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.

    • Re:Gamespy doing this too (Score:2, Informative)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      See, that's what bugs me when everyone says that Nintendo doesn't have an online strategy. At least with Nintendo's strategy of giving gamespy the information in return for creating the software (though technically unsupported) is very smart. Online gaming ability, only ever costing the consumer $35 out of pocket specifically (for the broadband adaptor) where as the consumer never has to pay the cost of developing online cost for a game, a monthly service charge to access a game, and no yearly charge to ha

    • This is something people keep forgetting:

      Remember that Microsoft has not made any money with Xbox or Xbox Live. None. Lost money. Will lose billions before they start headed back to black. But it doesn't matter - they make so much money off of Windows and Office that everything else they do can bleed money like crazy. Sony's similar in this respect - PS2 can lose money, they've got the pile they made off of PSOne to burn, plus all their other divisions.

      Nintendo is different. Nintendo doesn't make softwa

  • LAN v. Online (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Osty ( 16825 )

    I didn't see any mention of how they plan to reconcile development assumptions between LAN games (relatively secure environment, lag-free) and online games. From what I gather, this is not an officially supported project, and few (no?) developers will be writing games with this particularly in mind. Instead, they seem to to be planning to rely on developers writing LAN-capable games, and then tunneling those over the net like what's been done with XBox LAN-capable games. However, because they games will

    • Re:LAN v. Online (Score:2, Interesting)

      by unclethursday ( 664807 )
      However, because they games will be designed with LAN play in mind, they most likely won't properly handle lagging connections or untrusted clients.

      Same with XBconnect. But people use it 'cause it's free, and you can't play Halo over Live.

      And given the lack of Gamecube titles, I may find myself Cube-less within a year.

      YMMV, I say the same thing about the Xbox. I currently have 8 GC games on reserve, all of which are scheduled to hit in the next 6 months. That's more titles than I even own for my

      • What game genres are you interested in? Fighting games? Soul Calibur 2 will be best on XBox. Sure, you don't get link, but you will get the best audio and graphical experience on the XBox, and the XBox controller is better suited to a fighter than the GameCube controller. As well, Team Ninja is quite dedicated to the XBox, so you'll see plenty more Dead or Alive XBox-exclusive titles. Speaking of Team Ninja, if action is your thing then you can't miss Ninja Gaiden. And don't forget the upcoming Crimso

        • What game genres are you interested in?

          All sorts. It's just the main genres the Xbox does all the time tend to not float my boat.

          The Xbox has sucked at platformers (Blinx); sucked at party games (Kung Fu Chaos, Fusion Frenzy, Whacked!); sucked at RPGs (sorry, they've all been PC-style RPGs, and I don't like those, so Morrowind [read: glitchfest as well] and such are pants to me); finally has a decent puzzle game with Tetris Worlds; has a lot of sports titles which I could care less about on any system

        • Well, you're being a tad unfair in what you're comparing between the Xbox and the GC.

          For the Xbox, you purely mentioned future titles, with all the hype of a fanboy. A few of them are even on GC as well (XIII, EA Sports, Starcraft:Ghost).

          Meanwhile, you mentioned GC games that have been out for awhile (Mario Sunshine, Metroid: Prime, Rogue Leader, Skies of Arcadia), whereas it's the new games that really take advantage of the system.

          So you either have to compare older Xbox games (Splinter Cell (not exclus
          • Well, you're being a tad unfair in what you're comparing between the Xbox and the GC.

            But, you see, some people have to justify why they say some things.

            He says he may be without a GC within the next year, so he's attempting to justify it by saying all the Xbox titles he's looking forward to.

            I constantly think about selling my Xbox. I've beaten Halo a few times, even on Legendary. I've played JSRF to death (and Halo and JSRF were the reasons I bought my Xbox). But, every time I finally say I'm goi

            • I've been playing that game myself, and while I've had quite a bit of fun with it, I sincerely hope the sequel isn't so tedious.

              The worst are the ship battles, where the turn goes for a good 4 minutes before you can input any commands again (depending on the number of special attacks). And why is it that you can skip your Secial Moves, but nothing else? Not to mention the random battles. I can't even believe they 'toned it down' from the Dreamcast version, I can't even fathom that.

              However, I've gotten mor
            • I don't own an XBox, but I would buy one if Shenmue III ever arrived as an XBox exclusive. In fact, most of the games that really grip me on the XBox are SEGA titles, like JSRF and PDO, SegaGT, etc.

              I don't think it's a bad console. In fact, I think that the networking system is pretty revolutionary as far as online gaming goes. But there just isn't enough meat and potatoes on the console, aside from SEGA games, to make me all that interested. Even those are remakes of Dreamcast (sniff) titles.

              Skies of
              • I'm having some problem's with my Gamecube's optical drive (it locks up on two of my games).

                Call Nintendo and explain the problem. They've been good about repairing or replacing GC's, for free, even if they are out of warranty (but you will have to pay shipping at least one way, even if they fix/replace it for free).

                Besides, at least Nintendo gives a 1 year warranty, instead of the short 90 day ones from Sony and Microsoft. But, since I mentioned my 'Disk Read Error' message on my PS2, I'm getting th

                • It's still under warranty. I purchased it in November of last year (when Metroid Prime was released). I've just not taken the time to call them back for an RMA. I did call them once before, and they had me try a couple of things to test it. But I still need to take the time and call them back before it's too late.

                  There is definately a problem with disk reading though. I had the infamous elevator lock-up once in Metroid Prime. Skies of Arcade locks up when loading moves or monsters during battles (fre
        • I've played all threee versions many times.

          Really, you only benefit from the XBox version of Soul Calibur 2 if you have a high-quality television and a good surround sound system. On standard televisions, both versions look and play nearly identical. On an HDTV, the XBox version's higher resolution gives you the benefit of slightly better antialiasing. Gamecube's 720p still looks quite nice though. It really isn't much of an issue. In terms of texturing and lighting, speed, etc., both versions are abo

  • VPN (Score:1)

    by feder ( 307335 )
    Sounds interesting but is there any reason why a standard VPN bridge [sites.inka.de] wouldn't do the trick?
  • First off, in the interest of full-disclosure, I must say that I am a Nintendo fanboy and have had every system Nintendo ever made (yes, even Virtual Boy, but I admit it sucked).

    My idea for Mario Kart not being online is that it leaves room for the NEXT mario kart to sell well. Think about it... Mario Kart 64 (N64) was totally different than Super Mario Kart (SNES) because it was 3-d. Mario Kart: Double Dash (Gamecube) is similar to MK64, but it has the distinction of being better looking, having the dou
  • I, like most GC owners, have looked at the broadband adapter with hope, but Nintendo so far hasn't really used it for much. I don't really have the opportunity to set up a LAN with other GCs, so I'd be limited to online.

    Nintendo's website explicitly states that it needs to connect directly to a cable or DSL modem. Unfortunately, I've got a USB DSL modem and my provider won't upgrade me without paying more than I want to pay. I've got half a dozen computers sharing through the main PC just fine, though (mos
    • The Broadband adapter just needs to access 'the internet'. You don't specify to clearly how your dozen computers are sharing through your main PC, but if I'm correct in assuming you have kind of Windows Internet Sharing set-up with a router, you should be fine.

      Just set up the broadband adapter the same as you would your other computers (DHCP or Static IPs, whichever method you are using).

      I've never heard that you need to plug it directly into a cable or DSL modem. I even wonder if most games support PPPoE
  • If the next next gen of consoles are powerful enough why wouldn't Nintendo just have developers create games almost like pc games where the user can host their own servers off the console? Or even a utility to run a server thru Win/Nix. They don't have to dip into their pockets to run a service at all then.

    That's what I would do anyway.

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