Well, I do agree with most of the points in your post. I’ve seen some recent rise in kaillera players in my local servers. It’s probably because school holidays have started for some but the numbers are nowhere close to what it used to be compared to the year before last year.
Well, I do agree that lack of new games are a problem. And system resource issue goes hand in hand with that problem. Even if emulators of recent systems like CPS3 came out, I doubt we’ll be able to play it in playable speed offline let alone online on kaillera. Well, if you did not know, CPS-2 and Neogeo games on their native system run with a 12 MHz M68k processor.
Another problem is good servers. Whenever it lags, the blame automatically goes to kaillera’s “netcode” being inferior. And well, those have been advertised long enough around some parts that people just assume it to be the case. After the recent “emulinker and UOKS servers users half logged in” problem, I decided to do some research on the official server about why it does not have that problem(well, at least that was the rumor that was going around in some place). You know what I found? I found out that official server has the same problem. So the problem is independent of server code. Then I looked into some of the solutions (which did not work) some people came up with. Moosehead just assumed that it was a “SERVER STATUS PACKET TOO BIG” problem. TRAC thought that too. Well, I dont mean to offend anyone but looks like they failed to remember that big packets are reassembled and and re-split on every router based on MTU settings in layer-3. Well, I believe that Suprafast was the one to come up with delay on top of split. Well, it made things a little better as part of the problem was congestion but he is still sending plenty of packets to ultimately not help things. The real problem is, there are too many people in the servers. Every time someone logs in or leaves the server or someone’s game status changes or there is a new game or …bla bla bla… All the users get notified of the changes. You do the math on extra data and packets…
I do agree that things are not so black and white. I mean, The admins of these so called “good servers” using a server package which yields the delay greater than or equal to to the delay of the player with worst ping in the game and where all connection settings don’t work for all pings…just for some extra administrative options. Not to meantion the whole part where its written in java. And Did I fail to mention that everyone plays on “GOOD” which opposed to LAN adds an extra 33 ms delay to you input. I’m sure I’ll find some people who go for lowest response delay monitors (as in 5 ms as opposed to 8 ms, 3 ms difference) and just ignore something like that… I just don’t understand people…they prefer control over peace and then bitch about how how bad the situation is. The only people who’s gotten good in kaillera around those parts are the ones who’s played others in it and became used to the long delay…Taking wild chances and random pokes and hoping it connects and the other person cant block in time because his response is shit too. And why do people play on these servers? Last response I got from Kyokuji was that “other servers dampens your competitiveness” or something. I mean how is it competitive at all with lags like that.
If we really want things to change…we cant just bitch about it and and wait for someone else to make things right because that will never happen. In case you havent heard, kaillera’s sources were sold to a private online gaming advertising company named “TC. Ads” and this guy from israel called “Etai hugi” who I think was or still is its owner when it was sold. I strongly doubt companies or people like that who “invested” on kaillera will just release its sources. Its like microsoft making vista open source. Its just not going to happen. And he has owned it for over a year now and released no update so far. He also stopped responding to his contact in kaillera forums.
And well, I did realize the need for advertising to new people and having tutorials/directions/guides for the new comers and uniting all the communities. Thats why I took up MarvelKnight’s KailleraDB project last month. I convinced four and a half people (including me) to be part of the staff and I know that 3 of them will help for sure. So far we have a domain, an archive, a wiki and a forum. Unfortunately, I’m having my exams right now and using it as an excuse to populate the pages with some actual content. If things go at the speed they are going now, everything should be ready by the beginning of next month. If any of you have the time and the potential and want to help with things like writing tutorials and guides, I’d gladly give u the loc.