DC/GC Crossplay

Sylverant is a homebrew open source server for Phantasy Star Online. Dreamcast users still play PSO online with this server even today! This is the official forum for both the online game server as well as the open source project itself. Feel free to post and get a gathering started online! We can also show you how to get connected!

Moderators: BlueCrab, Aleron Ives

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zandengoff@gmail.com
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DC/GC Crossplay

Post by zandengoff@gmail.com »

I am a Dreamcast player having just started playing PSO. I am liking it so far, with a lot of people willing to help with basics and lift me up against harder enemies. However, one of the problems I constantly run across is GC players wanting to play with me on the DC.

I have used the beta dc/gc crossplay commands with another player and found them to be buggy (knowingly as warned). We had issues with button presses crashing the GC player and issues with enemies desyncing between clients (dead on my screen, alive on his and unkillable). So needless to say, cross play technically connects, but is not a usable feature at this time.

I understand that back in 2014 Bluecrab had this on a list of things that he was working on, but it seems that it got to an initial phase and stopped. Are there plans to continue development of this feature? It seems like it would help solidify the remaining players left on the servers by essentially doubling the player count.

I don't normally prod developers for features, but I have had several players tell me that it is impossible and nothing will ever come of cross play. Will there ever come a time when DC or GC won't matter?
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by BlueCrab »

Unfortunately, there's many things that are just plain not compatible between the two games. Without the time to work on such a massive undertaking, it's not likely to be moved up from the very back burner any time soon. :|

Simply put, there's probably no way to take out 100% of all the bugs between the games. With a lot of work on mapping ids over, a lot of things could be fixed, but this is a lot of work that I frankly don't have the time to do at the moment, unfortunately. That, and many other things are of a much higher priority... :?
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Aleron Ives »

The GC version tends to be rather unstable, so most GC users duplicate all of their valuable equipment so as to not lose it when the game deletes all of their unequipped items as a penalty for not saving properly. As a result, some GC users may be cavalier about cross platform play, since they don't really care if they crash or not. :P
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Zandengoff »

Thanks for the reply. I have been enjoying my time so far. I really just wanted to know the official stance on this as I managed to dig up old posts that seemed to be rather positive on the subject.

If cross play is not going to work, are there efforts underway to fix the restore command for GC? Maybe that way I could port my character back and forth from DC to GC using the server backup. Or am I just completely mis-understanding the way /save and /restore work.
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by BlueCrab »

Unfortunately, /restore not working is a result of Sega's anti-NOLing code in PSOGC -- the game doesn't allow you to overwrite character data from the server side.
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Aleron Ives »

As BlueCrab said, the only reason /restore is even possible on V2 is because of the game bug that allows NOLing to take place. Since GC fixed that bug, you'll never be able to use /restore on GC, but you can still make backups with one of several methods.

The most common method is to use the shop duplication glitch to clone all of your important weapons so that you can store backup copies in your bank. Every time you FSOD and lose all of your unequipped items, you can just withdraw the backups from your bank. Sega fixed this bug on PSO Plus, so you need a regular GC disc to do this, though.

Wii and Dolphin users also have the ability to copy their entire memory card to another location, so after your game crashes, you can either overwrite your memory card file with the backup (to roll back all of your data to before the crash), or if you gained levels or items that you don't want to roll back, you can load the backup as your second memory card and use splitscreen multiplayer to trade items with yourself (giving weapons from the backup character to the current character).

The only way to back up your memory card on an actual GC is to use the PSO streaming exploit (again, non-Plus only) to load homebrew software onto your GC that will let you copy your memory card. This is tedious, but it allows you to guard against corruptions, so it's worth doing it every once in a while, lest your memory card fail and delete up to four characters at once.
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Zandengoff »

Amazing, so it is a bug that allows you to restore characters at all in the first place! Very interesting.

A few more questions, I want to stay on DC as I am already lvl 21 and don't want to start over. In your opinion is that a good move? Do I lose anything significant from the GC version? You mentioned the GC version was buggy, is the DC version inherently more stable?
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Aleron Ives »

Both versions have their own bugs, features, and limitations, so that's a rather open-ended question. The GC version has more bugs that are likely to crash the game, but the DC hardware is weaker and more likely to randomly overheat and crash the game. :P
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by tueidj »

I have never had the GC version crash except when loading broken quests. Maybe you should try a real console instead of an emulator...
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Aleron Ives »

The Endless Warp crash happens on both real consoles and emulators. It just doesn't happen to you since using a Wii somehow bypasses the problem. That's great for you, but it's still a problem for everybody else who doesn't play on Wii. If we knew why using a Wii was able to bypass the problem, then maybe we could come up with an AR code to fix the game itself (or alter Dolphin's BBA emulation to simulate what the Wii is doing differently, at least), but you've already said that you don't want to look into it, so the infamous crash remains. I got an EW just a few days ago. :cry:
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Re: DC/GC Crossplay

Post by Zandengoff »

Thanks for all the info. I have decided to stay on the DC for now. I have a GDEmu, 4X Memory Card, and a Keyboard on the Dreamcast side so it just makes it easier to play. It would still be nice to get GC players mixed in, but hey the fact that this is online still is pretty amazing in itself.
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