Maximum number of players

rgveda99

rgveda99

Well-known member
What's the maximum number of players for Openbor for PC as of the moment?

Is it possible for 6 players just like the X-Men arcade game?
 
4 -
not sure if script would allow more with key intercepts and a bit of modding to the engine to ( allow mapping) , but officially there are no plans for 6 in the next version of the engine as far as i know
A shame,
cuz the more the merrier
 
Sorry guys. OpenBOR is four player max. There's no way to work around that**, and no plans to add more. It's nowhere near simple as it sounds to do. In fact we've rejected several code inserts by developers through the years trying to add more players. They introduced uncountable bugs and jacked up baseline resource consumption to an untenable level.

It's something we might try later, but is a very low priority item.

DC

**Technically you could write a system that divides up unused inputs of existing players to artificially create more players, but this would be a monumental undertaking with all kinds of technical gotchas to deal with before you got it stable.
 
DCurrent said:
**Technically you could write a system that divides up unused inputs of existing players to artificially create more players, but this would be a monumental undertaking with all kinds of technical gotchas to deal with before you got it stable.
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Correct - i was not able to articulate it yesterday

@rgveda99
- but here is a possible setup for a 6 player ninja turtle game -

most openbor games allow players to use up to 8 buttons, 10 if you include start & screenshot for a total of 40
OG tmnt needed each player to have 7 buttons -
4 directions, jump , attack , start
that's 42 - so you would be 2 buttons short - BUT you could go the SNES/N64 route & "replace" start with Attack, since the start button is not really needed in most openbor modules (only for pause)
so that leaves us with 36 buttons - 4 to spare -

if we where to go a very lazy route where you only rename things in the control options & do re-routes or intercepts for the 2 extra characters, the things end up KINDA like this:

setup player 1

move up
move down
move left
move right
attack 1
jump (taunt/use)
player 5 up (jump)
player 5 down (block/special)
player 5 left (start)
player 5 right (screenshot)

setup player 2

move up
move down
move left
move right
attack 1
jump (taunt/use)
player 6 up (jump)
player 6 down (block/special)
player 6 left (start)
player 6 right (screenshot)

setup player 3

move up
move down
move left
move right
attack 1
jump (taunt/use)
player 5 attack (jump)
player 5 jump (block/special)
player 6 attack (start)
player 6 jump (screenshot)

setup player 4

move up
move down
move left
move right
attack 1
jump (taunt/use)
player 1 pause (jump)
player 2 pause (block/special)
take screenshot (start)
cowabunga special (screenshot)

aftert his you just make sure to do "press attack/ press A " to start/continue on the selection menus & cinemas or dialogues
 
There are actually 12 inputs per player (Up, Down, Left, Right, A1, A2, A3, A4, Jump, Special, Start, and Screenshot). Plus one shared Escape key. That's not the problem. The issue is how you will deal with the extra players, period. You're going to have to handle credits, the HUD, element tracking, and so much more all on your own. Dozens and dozens of little variables you've never heard of the engine normally takes care of for you.

DC
 
@DCurrent -

yes, in Nightslashers wide 2019 players 3 & 4 had no score & they would not affect a bunch of things until i added some code & that code depended entirely upon the fact the engine supported 4 players.

the best most anyone that attempts this trickery will only accomplish what amounts to 2 player/input controlled "helper NPC's"

(kind of like tails in Sonic 2 - or Floyd in Jet Force geminy)

a thing that is not so bad , considering that @O Ilusionista 's avengers game features Helper selection, so the other extra buttons can be used to toggle between CPU or manual control of the helpers...
 
Thanks for the info. I thought by now Openbor is capable of an additional 5 or 6 players.

What a shame. Was gonna post this on my social media channels. Now I have to put a disclaimer Openbor is only capable of 4 players. 😅
Openbor-Mockup.png


Getting 4 friends on the couch these days is a challenge. 4 players is good enough anyway.
 
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@rgveda99

well, like i mentioned , the "least troublesome" method currently is to feature NPC/Helpers, and a program for the ability of them to be selected and controlled -
you have to make sure every enemy are hostile to NPC's too.

as for couch multiplayer, those PC master race gods can Parsec & will have no problem playing Openbor on-line -

its us the filthy toaster/console peasants, retro luddites, occasional amish, undiscovered tribals, hobbitts, mole people & psychopaths that have to organize or kidnap additional players...

To whomever attempts to do this tho, must include a very detailed controller mapping guide &/or use Kratu's version of the engine, last time i checked 6412 had serious "mapping crossover" issues
 
Hey I saw that openbor plus was recently announced, I'm wondering if maximum number of players (5-6) was considered as part of this new engine?
 
kaptainkommando said:
Hey I saw that openbor plus was recently announced, I'm wondering if maximum number of players (5-6) was considered as part of this new engine?
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Welcome to the community @kaptainkommando. Unfortunately, the so called "plus" is anything but. It is an unofficial port we don't support in any way. If you try to use it you're going to encounter a laundry list of issues and be completly on your own. There is however a new official version coming out this year.

As for player limits, I answered this very clearly earlier in the thread.

DC
 
Thanks for the clarification on the "Plus"! I see... so if more than 4 players are utilized it would require a lot of custom code to consider the extra 2 players (ensuring all of the logic in the classes update attributes for those extra 2 players). For the hud/UI/UX I would imagine, copying something like Shredder's revenge would be fine (however I'm sure it's easier since that engine was built from the ground up to consider 6 players). You mentioned that a new version will be released soon (I'm looking forward to it), do you think there will be a time that the team will consider a rewrite and if so, would that be the appropriate time to add the extra player functionality? I know that is unlikely but I was curious if the rewrite was ever in the cards. I appreciate the teams hardwork!
 
oldyz said:
A shame
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It's not "a shame". At all.
Kinda bothers me when people use such words towards the engine without knowing anything about how it works.

It's very disrespectful towards the devs, in fact.

To be honest, how much comercial beat em up games you know that allow more than 4 players in the game industry? It's very rare.

I remember someone pushed a code to allow 8 players, but the person didn't took care of all it needs - for example, the score screen. Have you tried to customize it? I did and it's a nightmare. 8 players would turn a coder life into Jason vs Freddy.

I know I am not part of the dev team anymore, bit if I would, this is something I would suggest to not be added to the engine, as I can give you a list of better things to have instead of this.
 

@O Ilusionista​

well, truth is that if a good module maker comes along and if the module seems promising enough, this limit can be overcome and openbor devs may be able to lend a hand.

first thing that comes to mind for 6 players, is your very own avengers module, it is a perfect succesor to the old Xmen 6 players arcade, and if i had the money i would do everything possible with such, and maybe with a bit of your help, would turn it into a 6 player game with extra wide screen format, i even know arcade cabinet makers and would definetely have some made for the public to enjoy around the city
(it is a weird artsy fartsy project i would like to do, where cabinets would placed at electronic plazas with unique games)

of course the hard part is to at least figure out a way to only get donations for the maintenance and some donations to the creators...
i got some ideas, but cant really reveal anything.
but alas i got some stupid 'life' stuff to take care of this year, and who knows what other junk may come down the pipeline....
 
oldyz said:
first thing that comes to mind for 6 players, is your very own avengers module, it is a perfect succesor to the old Xmen 6 players arcade
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hehehe you gave a bad exemple - I don't want that game to have more than 2 players at all. I've considered to have 3, but I would sacrifice some stuff that I don't want to :)
 
I agree that commercially there are not that many games that have more than 4 players (but I would argue this is an artifact of the physical arcade space which with Parsec and wireless controllers goes away). However there are several modules that would benefit from 5-8 players such as the Resident Evil: Survive module where you could play as the whole biohazard crew (Leon, Ada, Jill, Claire, Rebecca,Chris), or the power rangers module (red,blue,black,yellow,pink,green) or even in the previous thread they gave the example of all the sailor scouts from sailor moon. Even modern beatem ups have 5-8 characters to choose from such as Streets of Rage 4, Dungeons n Dragon Shadows of Mystara or Dragons Crown. This format is begging to bring the whole crew together. I agree that scaling resources would probably be a big challenge, but how cool would it be to see all the avengers/X-Men/Justice League assemble?
 
RetroArch even supports up to 16 ports to map controls to (I understand this is for games in which the controls are simple but you CAN map 16 ports theoretically)
 
O Ilusionista said:
hehehe you gave a bad exemple - I don't want that game to have more than 2 players at all. I've considered to have 3, but I would sacrifice some stuff that I don't want to :)
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fair enough, i think you mentioned it before, because if im not mistaken there is a hack out there that allows 4 players on an older release of the game or something.
the work for ultrawide screen would be tremendous, spawns have to have a whole new plan, keeping the balancing at the same quality is also a task.

the topic of respecting the original work is a tough one, tho
personally i am one of those freaks who likes to see things re-done, re-made, enhanced, etc
the one golden rule i have tho, is to make sure nothing is censored or deleted, and include the original work as a bonus or option.

now @kaptainkommando -
i have been introduced to Batocera thanks to @darknior, and from what i read it seems that it allows for online multiplayer, those 6 player games where inpractical back then, but on a platform like batocera they could actually become a thing.

heck , it is a thing, since warcraft and similar games do the online multiplayer already, except that those games are very point and click deals. Beathemups would have to be very well planned to work well, and unfortunately when it comes to scaling the levels and more dinamic stuff, a 3d engine is best suited for some tasks, but making beathemups in 3d is very difficult, it hardly ever feels right, and most of the time 2.5 is the best option...

otherwise we end up with clones of the xmen game one after the other and that gets stale pretty fast
 
Hi, i discover this topic today, and for sure, i've also dream many times to play OB with 6 or 8 players :)
If one day it become possible, some new game style will can be created ...
And yes, on the last TMNT it is possible to play with 6 players, so excited :)

@oldyz is right, update a game from 4/3 to 16/9 is a lot of work ... all ennemies spawn to move out of the screen, but it's easy to do for some one how know fine the engine. The hardest task is more to think if you must add some more ennemies some time, because the screen area is bigger ... the player has more place to move.
For me, all OB games would be upgrade to 16/9, on modern TV, today, it is better for players :)
.
And for the ONLINE option in Batocera @oldyz , yes it's available, and fantastic !!! but only for engine that have include it. Like libretro emulators, to play on megadrive SOR online with a friend :) Or some standalone emulators like XEMU for xbox or Dolphin for Wii or GC. But OB is not include a real online support :(
It is one of the bigest feature OB miss from a long time ... i know some are make a trick on windows with an external software, but it is a bad solution, for me online must be include in the engine, and then yes, we will can add it to batocera.
 
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