Cross-Platform Play? Thread

Hello Everyone

I was wondering if anyone knows of any games that are released for different hand-held consoles but still can play in LAN mode?

To give you an example, suppose one person has a DS-Lite and the other person has a PSP, is there a game or mode of game play (through a server with standardised message exchange for example) so that these two players can go "head to head" with their games?

I have been looking around with the term "Cross-Platform" but i am not sure it is the correct one as i am either getting comparative tests between the DS and the PSP OR Cross Platform compilation subjects :-/

Any ideas?

Youtube.com
i think this will get you somewhere :p not far but somwhere

I don't believe anyone has done it before. Most games / homebrew only target single platform.

ambershee wrote: I don't believe anyone has done it before. Most games / homebrew only target single platform.

most yes, its quite sad why cant a dev release an mmo or something on both the ds and psp and then allow players to connect to a server and play together the same way that this system works... I love to play online with my ds it rocks

Is it sincerely possible? I would imagine that for LAN there would be some sort of incompatibility of the code or something.

Just like you wouldn't be able to play a PS3 game on an Xbox, format aside, because of the processor framework difference.

Maybe a dedicated server thing would work out, since it would get client data and translate it, so to speak, into a different language for other clients. Best metaphor I can think of.

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Ark

Both use WiFi to connect to the Internet. So after all what happens is TCP/IP transmission and that is interoperable. I doubt though Nintendo nor Sony would allow games on their consoles which do not use their exclusive only way-of-doing-online-gaming :/

Henley wrote:

ambershee wrote: I don't believe anyone has done it before. Most games / homebrew only target single platform.

most yes, its quite sad why cant a dev release an mmo or something on both the ds and psp and then allow players to connect to a server and play together the same way that this system works... I love to play online with my ds it rocks

An MMO of any kind on a less than 100Mhz processor??

ambershee wrote:

Henley wrote:

ambershee wrote: I don't believe anyone has done it before. Most games / homebrew only target single platform.

most yes, its quite sad why cant a dev release an mmo or something on both the ds and psp and then allow players to connect to a server and play together the same way that this system works... I love to play online with my ds it rocks

An MMO of any kind on a less than 100Mhz processor??

i do believe they are attempting to make ragnarok online for the ds Kotaku.com

ambershee wrote: I don't believe anyone has done it before. Most games / homebrew only target single platform.

check the movie i posted: quake in mp, one on the ds the other on the psp

Hello everyone

I am kind of glad i delayed answering this post, seems like others would also like this cross-console type of gaming. Thanks for the posts so far.

@Dark_Raver9: Thanks for the video, this would be (is) the next ideal thing after ad-hoc one to one play. Maybe the PSP could handle running both the game and a server instance but i am not sure for the DS.

@DragonLord: I personally do not see a problem with the companies behind the PSP and the DS in producing "Cross Console" games. It is probably up to the game companies to do it and they could set-up and maintain their own game servers either with an one-off charging or subscription fees. Besides, if this thing catches up with the market, the bigger companies can always buy the smaller ones :-)

@Ambershee: "MMO on a less than 100MHz?" I iused to play Hexen (i think it was called like that) on a 386 at 40MHz (admittedly with the math co-pro installed) and 4MB of memory (I will not mention Doom2 because it was not 3D). I think that it can be done with certain compromises. Besides, something like an FPS on "arena" mode with just 2 players would not be THAT hard to handle.

I am also inclined to think that since both consoles have TCP / IP stacks (the PSP has a built in web browser and i am pretty sure the DS-Lite can also do it) it would just be a matter of exchanging the right messages to communicate with each other. So, it's just a question if anyone has already done this.

If the console can take it then one client version recompiled for each arch would be fine. Otherwise, i think it would be kind of cool to have different clients each tailored to the special features and capabilities of each console. For example, if a console did not have enough power to do 3D (even Quake) then the gameplay could be changed to something like a Top View 2D aspect with different sprites for each player and level features (elevators, boost ramps, power ups, etc).

Hmmm, here is an extra reason for getting a mod-cartridge :-)

Hehe. Problem with different gameplay is that in online play some could get unfair advantages. We had this back then when the more experienced Quake players playing with a mouse and keyboard hit new players playing only with the direction keys. This is sort of "different" gameplay in that the possible movements ( and the time frame in which you can carry them out ) varied a great deal. Thew outcome is clear: the mouse players floored the others hands down. Doing so with a 3D versus 2D view of the same game can result well in the same problem. Furthermore Quake as an example already had true 3D in the sense of rooms that could be above other rooms ( for example Duke3D's Build Engine could not host sectors above other sectors ) hence a 2D view is tricky to do in the first place.

What goes for power PSP can do 3D without much ado. DS has more problems. Quake does run on DS as the video shows so it is not impossible but you need a damn good engine to do this. Most DS 3D games look so utter ugly it's not funny anymore.

Hexen is a doom clone, and largely also 2d with a bit of 3d math in the engine. Hardly even vaguely akin to an MMO. It's not even in the same league.

@Dragonlord: Yeah, i thought about the unfairness introduced by different modes of gameplay too but anyway Quake was just an example, i am just refering to games that could be played with similar gameplays by both consoles. Besides...even if it is unfair....it's more realistic....fairness is a trick of the mind :-D :-D :-D

@ambershee: I am not sure if it was Hexen as i hint in my previous message. It was one of those games that boasted "true" 3D. I also remember playing Descent on that 386 and i am pretty sure this was fully 3D. I will also repeat that it doesn't have to be an FPS or MMO...just games that run in both consoles and also enable cross playing.

Descent had been full 3D that's correct. Quake used an alignment trick to keep the player from loosing orientation. Descent dropped this to introduce this mind-boggling game mechanic of up and down switching around a lot ( hence you could fly through a corridor upside down and realizing only after quite some time that it's the damn same corridor ). That said Descent used a Voxel engine. I never looked closer at it but the work composes only of cubes

The MMO part was more in response to Henley, not the topic directly. Descent was pretty ahead of it's time, as I recall. It's still not comparable to an MMOG though; Descent as an example only ever has to deal with loading content from storage, then dealing with what needs to be calculated. An MMOG has to stream content from somewhere, before even being processed and loaded, as well as checking a whole shedload of relevance. Descent doesn't use voxels, it uses polygonal geometry and some weird cubic level design algorithm that I've never seen anywhere else.

Final Fantasy XI is playable on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC interchangeably on all platforms, and there is no difference nor segregation between players or accounts; in fact if you own more than 1 version, you can log out of one platform, and log back in on the same account afterwards on another one, if you so choose.

It's the only game I'm aware of where you can do this, however.

ambershee wrote: The MMO part was more in response to Henley, not the topic directly. Descent was pretty ahead of it's time, as I recall. It's still not comparable to an MMOG though; Descent as an example only ever has to deal with loading content from storage, then dealing with what needs to be calculated. An MMOG has to stream content from somewhere, before even being processed and loaded, as well as checking a whole shedload of relevance. Descent doesn't use voxels, it uses polygonal geometry and some weird cubic level design algorithm that I've never seen anywhere else.

did u even click the link? That game is similar to diablo and i never said it was a FPSMMO

It's not an MMO.

Another problem you have regarding cross-platform gameplay between the DS and PSP is their significantly different features. Whilst the PSP tries to encourage high quality visuals, the DS is much less capable, focusing much more on the mechanics and using the stylus. Therefore, when you create any kind of online, hand held cross platform title between the two, you have to find a medium that allows both to play at a fair level. Graphics can't be too superior on the PSP, and the DS can't use its unique features such as the touch screen, as either could be argued as an unfair advantage. To do this would take up a lot of development time, tweaking and balancing. For this reason, its far easier and cost efficient for developers to just treat them as separate games entirely when it comes to connectivity.

@Dragonlord: Hmmm, so it's not that the levels are huge (like i thought) it's just that i was loosing my way through them ;-D

@Ambershee: I take your point that an MMO could potentially mean that lots and lots of animated 3d models would have to be rendered within the players viewport making the CPU workload unbearable. But it would still be fun to be able to play capture the flag (for example) with a friend who owns the other type of console without much hassle...It could be a marketing feature maybe.

@Scourged_Wolf: I understand the considerations. However, both consoles have the standard interface of 4 buttons per thumb + 1 button per index so this could already be used as a tried and tested basis of game play for things like FlightSim - not necessarily with real world dynamics, car race games, Turn Based strategy, platform, Street Fighter type of games...and others maybe.

The problem is more the bandwidth. DS and co uses rather lousy WiFi. Sum this up with a mediocre CPU and there you are... the mix doesn't play well anymore.

Hello again,

Dragonlord, do you mean that simply a low powered console would not be able to handle both rendering and a quick exchange of messages? Or are there some "interesting" details we should know about the WiFi implementation in those devices? :-D

As mentioned WiFi is not the best on those. Especially the NDS sports some incredibly bad WiFI support. Not only works it with next to no access point out there it also uses low transmission speeds ( every low grade laptop has better WiFi ). This already reduced the amount of data you can squeeze through the connection by a lot. What goes for the processor the more players you have to keep track of the more CPU time is spend. The NDS is not the strongest handheld console in existence and therefore saving processing time wherever you can is vital. But the bottle neck here is really the WiFi hardware in the first place since the player handling can be offloaded to a dedicated server ( as in your example of quake ). What goes for the PSP I don't know since I only own an NDS.

The most complicated part of producing a cross platform PSP/DS game is getting them to recognise eachother. Having worked on both PSP and DS games I have seen a few examples of how to get them to communicate but thus far I don't know of any homebrew developers that have taken it very far. The first example I saw was tic-tac-toe played DS vs PSP;

Pgrevolution.com

As for the differences in the consoles, that's entirely up to the developers of the game, so long as the network code works at the same rate on both consoles it shouldn't matter 'how' you play the game with the different controls, so long as the same messages are passed from one console to the other when required.

Hello again, thanks for the responses.

Dragonlord: Yeah i get what you mean on the workload thing. The DS Lite has two processors though :-D Also, maybe you are thinking "Big Guns", games that are very heavy to play.

Bytrix: OK, you went completely on the opposite side....Tic Tac Toe is not exactly...like....you know, the reason to connect a DS and a PSP.

Since talking hypothetically is not getting us anywhere shall we draw a list of games that would be interesting seing developed as "Cross Platform"? And also a list of games that would be really awful to have them played in both consoles.

Let's also keep as a spec that they should at minimum be played with the 4 buttons on each thumb and the two index digit switches. Optionally they can support the specialties of each platform...like the analog joystick of the PSP or the stylus of the DS.
So i start with 2D racing, something like "Ironman offroad racing" (really old game but kind of fun, or anything like a 2D top view racer) , or maybe Chess or checkers. And the worst to be played in both would be.............Well, COD (?)

Any ideas anyone? How does this look?