Re: Daytona Usa 2001 Online Archive
Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2018 2:53 pm
Mechanic wrote:Hey just burned daytona usa and tried netplay only to find i need some sort of serial key in the vmu to get online. then it booted me out to the dreamcast home screen. Maybe a cdi issue or just the lack of a serial key
Daytona USA isn't back online yet. Check the page below for games that have been reactivated. It's a time consuming process because the guys here basically have to rebuild the servers to get each game to work - and it's not a generic connection so it's not a one-fix-fits-all deal.
http://www.dreamcastlive.net/games.html
Checking out the IGN reviews on this page - viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9797
First off, unlike Phantasy Star Online there's no serial number or card key you have to enter when you wanna play Daytona online. However, before you play online, you do have to go to the Daytona homepage and download an access save file from the site. This is pretty painless, as you go through the standard creation logins of username, passwords, and optional information to fill out. Once you've downloaded the save file, you can no enter Network Battle. At this point, there are two main severs to access, each with Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert lobbies for players to hangout (24 lobbies in all). Additionally, you can create your own lobby as well. Once you're in a lobby, you can chill and chat or setup games and although you don't necessarily need a keyboard to chat (a dropdown keyboard will come up on screen if you don't), we all know how much fun typing with the DC pad can be. And if you have a hard time finding your pals for a race, there's a handy User search that searches by the player's handle.
This review gives us a lot of information on the set up of the Daytona USA online system, at least in a general sense. The Daytona USA access save file is likely the key that told Daytona where to connect. If that's the case, building a modified save file for the VMU would be the logical way to reroute the server (however the server would need to be set up and ready to go). It appears the online side of Daytona was 60fps smooth, but the opponents car would jump/teleport from spot to spot at times. This may be fixed with the max-speed solution of the DreamPi rather than internet connections of the era, but we won't know that until the game is brought back online either.
I'd be well up for some head-to-head Daytona USA though
As for MSR, I think trying to pull in games that weren't designed with online play in mind across is a bit too much atm. If we were going to try it, it would be an experiment that would first go through attempting online play through F355 Challenge's local LAN play (Tricking the Serial Port into playing over the internet). That might give a bit more information as to how to adapt multiplayer code for online play. While it would be awesome to MSR online, I think it's too much of an experiment to be of value at this point. If you look at that page of games, you'll see there's plenty of online-driven titles that need some love.