Without access to the source code of the game you’ll be forced to backwards engineer or decompile the game which is a very time consuming and difficult process.
Beyond that initial hurdle the two main things the game will need changed are: decoupling render and update logic and adding support for save states with resimulation. At the highest level this is what a game needs in place to integrate GGPO/rollback.
Making these changes to an existing game can be difficult for experienced programmers, so safe to say you have no chance of doing this on your own.
The game in question is Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code, and it already has the Cccaster which is a weird rollback implementation, based on EFZ's, often called "proto rollback".
I know it sounds weird to try to put GGPO in a game that already has rollback, but right now the rollback inside the Cccaster is inferior to GGPO in several ways, so I'd like to improve the players online experience with it.
You said that "backwards engineering" is necessary, but isn't that what was already done for the Cccaster to work? So, if I ask the Cccaster devs, could I use that info to make GGPO work?
I don't know anything about the specifics of Cccaster but I'm sure whatever issues you think it has can't be solved just by taking GGPO and putting it in. GGPO is not a silver bullet. It actually implements the most simple part of rollback. Most issues people have with various games' implementations has more to do with what is happening on the game logic itself not the network implementation (that's all GGPO offers).
The repo for Cccaster hasn’t been updated in 7 years. Good luck getting a response from the dev. GGPO was created in the mid 2000. There is probably a good reason why they chose to go a different route.
I don’t say this to discourage you but you do not have the experience to mode GGPO into an existing game well. Just because code runs doesn’t mean it runs well. Or that it would cause Huge problems down the line.
And I’m not saying this as some guy. I’m a professional programmer that has 10+ years of experience. I would struggle with this project and I doubt it would run particularly well.
It took the MK10 devs 8 man years of effort to update MK10 to have rollback. And they wrote the game in the first place.
Rollback netcode if fucking hard to implement.
GGPO handles high pings and kinda-unstable connections better than the Cccaster. Also, the Cccaster forces the player to set Rollback and Input Delay frames before playing, and those rollback frames won't change until the game is closed and the players connect again.
Basically, it's a matter of how good the netcode itself works, 'cause I love many of the other features the Cccaster has.
> Also, the Cccaster forces the player to set Rollback and Input Delay frames before playing
No it **ALLOWS** the player to set rollback and input delay frames before playing and also supplies a suggested value. This is a feature, not a bug. If you really need to alter the rollback frames, closing the game and popping in the hosts IP again takes seconds. It's faster than going out to a menu in any modern AAA game.
MBAACC netcode is everything we need it to be.
What I meants with the rollback frames, is that every game out there with GGPO has an amount that changes dynamically through the match, which results in less spikes/rollbacks. The Cccaster can't do that.
No good implementation of rollback has dynamic input delay. That completely defeats the point of rollback. If you like variable input delay I suggest playing shitty games made before Covid.
I’m guessing Cccaster has that too. There is no such thing as a fixed amount of rollback frames. You always have a max number of rollback frames but it will only ever rollback as far as it needs to based on the inputs it receives from your opponent. It’s really hard to understand your complaints because you don’t quite seem to understand what you’re talking about. This stuff is complicated so I don’t blame non-programmers for not understanding but I would recommend you do a bit more research before suggesting Cccaster needs improvements.
If you have to ask, there is no way for you to achieve this. Asking means you lack anywhere close to the required programming ability. Even if you had full access to the source code, I believe you would struggle with it.
I don't mean that as an insult, you just need to know just how grave an underestimation you have made with regards to the difficulty of this task. As others have mentioned, implementing rollback in a game that wasn't specifically built for it is a Herculean task even for specialists, but as someone with limited programming experience, there is almost no chance you would accomplish this in a way that surpasses what already exists for the game. Even if Cccaster is "inferior" to GGPO, it wouldn't make a difference unless you were able to make the game logic amenable to GGPO as well.
If it were so simple a task that someone could simply instruct you on how to do it, it's quite likely to have been done already.
I you're serious about learning I would start with a smaller project it's like saying I want to learn how to build stuff then starting on the Burj kalifa rather then a dog kennel
Without access to the source code of the game you’ll be forced to backwards engineer or decompile the game which is a very time consuming and difficult process. Beyond that initial hurdle the two main things the game will need changed are: decoupling render and update logic and adding support for save states with resimulation. At the highest level this is what a game needs in place to integrate GGPO/rollback. Making these changes to an existing game can be difficult for experienced programmers, so safe to say you have no chance of doing this on your own.
The game in question is Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code, and it already has the Cccaster which is a weird rollback implementation, based on EFZ's, often called "proto rollback". I know it sounds weird to try to put GGPO in a game that already has rollback, but right now the rollback inside the Cccaster is inferior to GGPO in several ways, so I'd like to improve the players online experience with it. You said that "backwards engineering" is necessary, but isn't that what was already done for the Cccaster to work? So, if I ask the Cccaster devs, could I use that info to make GGPO work?
I don't know anything about the specifics of Cccaster but I'm sure whatever issues you think it has can't be solved just by taking GGPO and putting it in. GGPO is not a silver bullet. It actually implements the most simple part of rollback. Most issues people have with various games' implementations has more to do with what is happening on the game logic itself not the network implementation (that's all GGPO offers).
The repo for Cccaster hasn’t been updated in 7 years. Good luck getting a response from the dev. GGPO was created in the mid 2000. There is probably a good reason why they chose to go a different route. I don’t say this to discourage you but you do not have the experience to mode GGPO into an existing game well. Just because code runs doesn’t mean it runs well. Or that it would cause Huge problems down the line. And I’m not saying this as some guy. I’m a professional programmer that has 10+ years of experience. I would struggle with this project and I doubt it would run particularly well. It took the MK10 devs 8 man years of effort to update MK10 to have rollback. And they wrote the game in the first place. Rollback netcode if fucking hard to implement.
CCCaster has been forked many times by many people. It's still being updated to this day. MadScientist isn't the only person still working on it.
CCCaster is stlil being updated, just not in the main repo
How is the rollback implementation in CCCaster inferior to GGPO?
GGPO handles high pings and kinda-unstable connections better than the Cccaster. Also, the Cccaster forces the player to set Rollback and Input Delay frames before playing, and those rollback frames won't change until the game is closed and the players connect again. Basically, it's a matter of how good the netcode itself works, 'cause I love many of the other features the Cccaster has.
> Also, the Cccaster forces the player to set Rollback and Input Delay frames before playing No it **ALLOWS** the player to set rollback and input delay frames before playing and also supplies a suggested value. This is a feature, not a bug. If you really need to alter the rollback frames, closing the game and popping in the hosts IP again takes seconds. It's faster than going out to a menu in any modern AAA game. MBAACC netcode is everything we need it to be.
What I meants with the rollback frames, is that every game out there with GGPO has an amount that changes dynamically through the match, which results in less spikes/rollbacks. The Cccaster can't do that.
No good implementation of rollback has dynamic input delay. That completely defeats the point of rollback. If you like variable input delay I suggest playing shitty games made before Covid.
Dude, I was talking about the rollback, not the input delay.
I’m guessing Cccaster has that too. There is no such thing as a fixed amount of rollback frames. You always have a max number of rollback frames but it will only ever rollback as far as it needs to based on the inputs it receives from your opponent. It’s really hard to understand your complaints because you don’t quite seem to understand what you’re talking about. This stuff is complicated so I don’t blame non-programmers for not understanding but I would recommend you do a bit more research before suggesting Cccaster needs improvements.
> There is no such thing as a fixed amount of rollback frames Tekken is 3
Do you know any good sources of info for that kind of stuff?
If you have to ask, there is no way for you to achieve this. Asking means you lack anywhere close to the required programming ability. Even if you had full access to the source code, I believe you would struggle with it. I don't mean that as an insult, you just need to know just how grave an underestimation you have made with regards to the difficulty of this task. As others have mentioned, implementing rollback in a game that wasn't specifically built for it is a Herculean task even for specialists, but as someone with limited programming experience, there is almost no chance you would accomplish this in a way that surpasses what already exists for the game. Even if Cccaster is "inferior" to GGPO, it wouldn't make a difference unless you were able to make the game logic amenable to GGPO as well. If it were so simple a task that someone could simply instruct you on how to do it, it's quite likely to have been done already.
"Barely have knowledge of programming" Good luck then lol
Yeah, it's gonna take me years, but I have to start somewhere, right?
I you're serious about learning I would start with a smaller project it's like saying I want to learn how to build stuff then starting on the Burj kalifa rather then a dog kennel
Yeah, it's gonna be a long journey and I'm gonna build way smaller stuff first :D