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I just played 3 games ranging from 55-60fps with Chris (AcerBandit on the WP Forums) at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. I attend Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. The first two races (played the first two courses) had no noticable lag at all. We even compared the game time to real time and found that the game was playing in exact real time, a full 60fps! On course three, we noticed a bit of lag, but the game was still very playable with only a few noticable slow downs during the race.
Please note that the current build of Warp Pipe is an unoptimized alpha version, so this should show the importance of University Connections when it comes to reaching these speeds. We look forward to supporting residential cable and dsl connections at (or close to) full framerate in our next releases (beta and beyond).
Until then, I have created a University Network Connections thread on the Warp Pipe Forums and I encourage all who access a University Network and are able to (now or in the future) meet the requirements to run Warp Pipe, to post in this thread, as I would like to conduct further testing.
This is just one small step for Warp Pipe, as we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves, but it did feel good to essentially play the first "real game" of Kirby Air Ride online, even if Chris won 3/3 times.
Warp Pipe Windows (Alpha) 0.1.2 Version 2 has been released. This release fixes bugs that prevented certain people from being able to bind to certain sockets and connect properly.
Users trying to connect from Version 1 will not be able to do so. They will be forced to upgrade, and we advocate that all gamers do so.
There are three files available for download. Full (for those who don't have WinPCap), Lite (for those who have WinPCap), and Upgrade (for those who already installed Alpha 0.1.2 Full or Lite).
After months of hard work, we have released our Windows Alpha 0.1.2 version software available for download and immediate public testing. I would like to thank our great development team Nathan Ford, Tushar Singh, and Matthew Herberg.
Alpha releases are rarely made publicly available, but we wanted to release the application for testing to give back to the budding community that has really supported this project in its early stages. Be advised that half frame rate was attained by two people with a fairly good connection and not much in between. Results may vary and we recommend a 256kbps upload speed. Optimization has also not taken place, so rest assured, we realize speed issues. After all this is an alpha release.
Please note when downloading, WinPCap is a required library needed to run Warp Pipe on Windows correctly. Therefore, two installers exist accordingly. FULL: This release has the Windows (alpha) Warp Pipe software and WinPCap required library. This release is recommended for those who do not have WinPCap installed, as it is a required library to run Warp Pipe. LITE: This release is intended for people who already have the WinPCap library installed.
As you may have noticed, we have pulled our linux alpha due to compatibility issues with Windows Alpha. Rest assured that all operating system releases will be operate with each other, hence the reason we pulled it. We will release rpms and debs as soon as we take care of the compatibility issues.
The Warp Pipe project now has a set of forums to allow people to discus the project further, report bugs, and find other people who are willing to test the software. Please read the Warp Pipe forum rules before posting!
We are coming close to releasing our Windows alpha software for testing. More to come soon.
I have an inbox flooded with messages from people who are interested in testing out our software, but are unaware on how to go about it. As it stands now, we have one software release. This release is version 0.1 of our alpha and is linux only. For those of you who have linux, below are the requirements to test the alpha release.
LINUX TESTING REQUIREMENTS
1) GameCube Broadband Adapter
2) GameCube with Kirby Air Ride (USA or JPN)
3) Router
4) PC running Linux
5) Broadband Connection (Cable, DSL, etc.)
6) WarpPipe Software
Notes: The router must be directly connected to both your Linux PC and your GameCube. You must also find someone else willing to test with you. If you meet these requirements and you are interested in testing with someone, I suggest you post in the comments in order to find others who are willing to test. Furthermore, all operating and compliling instructions are available with the release of our software. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me.
As stated earlier, we are currently in the process of porting the code over to libpcap so we can release our beta in OSX, Linux, and Windows. This beta will also show a significant performance increase from the alpha. Big thanks to Nate, our lead developer, as he has been working hard to make sure that we release our beta in time for Mario Kart: Double Dash.
Kirby Air Ride is finally available in the states. The Warp Pipe Project team is happy, as we will be able to conduct further testing with a wide range of people. As for the status of the project, Nathan our lead developer has some words he would like to share:
As lead programmer for the WarpPipe daemon i'd like to apologize for the slowness of development. I was working on it 8hrs a day until I became employed. Then time became scarce. I know i'm making excuses but I hope you can wait just a tad longer for more improvements. I become un-employed this friday the 17th so development will resume full speed.
Now to answer some questions floating around here.
1) we've hit a bit over 20fps, but as of right now performance is heavily dependent on your connection to the net. Kirby sends data every frame in a ring so packets need to make that loop in 1/60th of a second. I have some ideas i'm going to try to hopefully reduce the packet load and allow the game to reach closer to 60fps, but you'll have to wait just a bit longer for these.
2) Sorry about no code/files being released. That's also my fault. The code is now on CVS on SourceForge. I added a readme explaining how it works and what needs to be done to use it.
As for moving forward, we are porting the current daemon code to libpcap (winpcap for windows) to make our daemon portable, modular, and a bit easier to read the code. We welcome all developer support, as Nathan will be in charge of merging changes into CVS. We are aiming for a stable build of the daemon with a simple GUI for Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows in time for the release of Mario Kart: Double Dash. We have a dedicated GUI team and a dedicated server team and we hope to have a feature rich product that enables you to meet and challenge other GCN players around Christmastime/ New Year.
We are always looking for great developers. If you are interested, send me (the project manager) a message via our Sourceforge page.