Some users say it's possible and others say it's not. For those who say it's possible, prove to me that it's possible by telling me how it's possible.

The reason I'm asking this is because I'm willing to invest some money into the RGR Plugin for GBA/GBC/GB netplay. My goal is to have Netplay added to the gameboy systems by summer, assuming it's possible.

Staff : Summoning you guys in case one of you know how to do this.

After looking through some things I found out it is posssible how it's possible. 

Lumian : earthwarrior tried summoning you.

Davideo7 : Well if that Vba link thing possibly works.  You should tell users to Find a Versus Va link connection In a Gameboy advance game. Others  beside gba im not exactly sure because they never originally had  mutilplayer options so thats a possiblity 

SuperCrash64 : VBALink needs to be set up and it can be a little complicated I believe. And David wants to get this compatible with the rgr plugin. 

earthwarrior : Still. You need to go in a versus option  even if you do get Vba link working. You need to acess a Mutilplayer by Link connection otherwise  The 2 players wont respond properly  Remember Emulation is just based on how the actual system works. So Vba is a game boy advance emulator And it is supposed to support the Net link connection. And if you want that to work you need to go  Two player mode by Link connection its a fact

Davideo7 : I know how this works. There is a certain version of VBA, as others have said already, which allows you to link between two instances of the VBA. It's really not that difficult, at all. There is a section with link capabilities in the drop-down menus that the original VBA doesn't have. What you must do, is open an instance, and input the IP and port to connect to of the person you are trying to link up. They have to do the same on their end, and then you can use the VBA to do things such as trade Pokémon. I used to do it with myself a few years ago; Have two saves of Pokémon games that are trade-compatible, then open one instance with one save, and another VBA instance with the other save. Just enter the same IP and port for both VBAs, and you can trade with yourself. I'm not entirely sure how we could get this to work with the plug-in, but I'm guessing that it could be done.

The only problem with most games like Pokémon, which would be the main game I assume people would be using the netplay function for, is that you can make two saves, trade with somebody, and then trade the Pokémon from the save you didn't trade on back to yourself using your own VBA. That way, you gain the traded Pokémon without losing any.

I would also assume that, because the connection involves IP and port compatibility, that one could open an instance of the plug-in, and an instance of their own copy of the VBA, and trade with themselves that way. It would promote a lot of cheating, so there would likely be no competitions using that emulator anymore.

This should explain everything a bit better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYM98maNsAo

GuardianZack : Thanks for the info, I'll pass that on to Tom.

GuardianZack : This is what Tom asked:

"I'm curious if it works over the internet with like DSL. On the webpage it says LAN support, making me think it's maybe not very usable over the internet. Do you know if the guy who posted on vizzed has tried it over the internet?"

I guess he was too shy to ask you himself lol.

Davideo7 : I haven't tried it, but Internet  play is possible. You have to set up an individual server for all of the players that are included in the link up. Basically, the same way a server is set up for instances of netplay.

Think of it in the same way that ZSNES works. The connection would mainly be dependent on the capabilities of both user's connections. I don't think it is going to be usable for players on DSL or dial-up, but those within national boundaries with a decent cable connection should be fine.

This video may help with understanding how the Internet play works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdVT_yHJo8w

I might be a bit late in responding, but back when I was testing netplay, we tried doing Pokémon Ruby, but the problem with that is that was whenever we did, it would send everyone in the game, but since the standard vba only supports one Game Boy, only one person was playing and the rest were like 'spectators'.

Ahem, yes, sorry guys and gals who tried to summon me. I have been occupied for a while.







Yes, Visualboy Advanced will connect over the internet. But last time I used it, months ago, it /did/ require users to be connected over a VLAN. That is, a virtual network. This is something that is fairly easy to establish. For my personal netplay experiences we used the softwares hamachi and tunngle. Official Visualboy Advance won't do it though, you need Visualboy Advance Link (http://www.vbalink.info/). You will see they even have guides there for netplaying, and the source code is available.






One thing though, not all of the link cable's modes are emulated. Which does mean some games won't work (I don't know offhand which, but I could research this).

Davideo7 :
earthwarrior :

EDIT: Also, yes, it really does work for quite a few link capable games. It's difficult to find people willing to VLAN old handhelds a lot though, so I can't say I have tested it too thoroughly outside of the few games I played. ... It does not, however, support GB/GBC for netplay. For that you'd need an emulator like TGB Dual: http://gigo.retrogames.com/download.html#tgb-dual (the source code and most up to date version is here, nevermind that last link I posted).

Lumian : They don't have the source code available for their 1.8 version and that's the version that supports wifi.

GuardianZack : Do those routes require the vbalink?

Davideo7 : I don't see why wi-fi is needed right now, only about 30 GBA games ever supported wi-fi and as far as I know every game that supported wi-fi also supported link cable You wouldn't want the wi-fi source right now anyway, it's in beta.

Lumian : I'm pretty sure when they say Wifi, they mean netplay. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the GBA didn't support Wifi, you might be thinking of the DS.

Davideo7 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Advance_Wireless_Adapter

No, I can confirm 1.72 works on the net via LAN (emulated link cable) mode.

Davideo7 : Yes, because the only version of VBA with multiplayer functionality at all, is the VBA Link.

Lumian : Tom and I just tried it out. We got connected playing Advance Wars but it was really really laggy and within a minute it timed out. I'm not sure what we would have to do to improve the performance but what we experienced would be a huge problem.

GuardianZack : Refer to what I said to Lumian.


If either of you guys can get connected with someone and figure out how to get it not to be so laggy, let me know.

Is gba netplay your only goal or are you trying to get gb and gbc netplay too?