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A story I posted on reddit about how gamechanging VR is for people who like local couch multiplayer

Domitjen
Adventurer
(Original Title from other reddit post:)
To anyone who loves Super smash brawl or other fighting wii games, there is a gamechanger rising.

(Text)

And it's called Virtual Reality.
Now hear me out before you click me away.
Since I was a kid, I was always a vivid fan of local couch multiplayer games, loved playing super smash,dragonball z tenkaichi 3 , soul calibur, or other types such as mario kart and all that.

I always tinkered with emulators and played some of these old games again thanks to these, but never very long because it was always vs bots, and to find someone online with dolphin netplay was such a pain in the ass always, I perhaps succeeded 3 times to get a netplay game going and then there were desync issues or people just left and I was left in the dark.
That was until I got my Vr headset, I own a Rift, but what I'm about to say is also totally possible with the Htc Vive.
In vr, there is an app called "Bigscreen", **this app allows you to actually BE in certain places** like a home theater cinema, or a living room, or the pentagon or whatever.

Now here is the interesting part.. This app is multiplayer, so other people could join in your livingroom or home cinema theater and what not.. And they see and hear everything you do on your monitor, and you see and hear what they do on theirs.
Each VR headset also has an integrated mic, so the moment someone enters your living room, their avatar pops up (imagine cartoony but stylish heads and hands) and you hear them speak and their mouth moves.
So one night I had the idea with a guy who joined my cinema room, to try out a dolphin netplay game. We wanted to see if that worked.

So we each downloaded dolphin, and had the exact same Rom, and started a netplay lobby. And then we fought against each other on a huge ass cinema screen WHILE seeing his reactions (body language)  AND  hear him scream,laugh,curse along with the matching gestures.
Since then we added each other on steam, and each time we saw each other on steam we started up a match.
Before I continue I must not forget to tell you this: Dolphin has a native Side by Side setting, so when you are in a VR headset , you can activate Side by Side 3d in bigsreen, this means that we were playing on a huge ass cinema and the games were IN 3D while being IN VR.

You could compare this as going to the cinema and it's a 3d movie, seeing the characters "pop out" the virtual cinema screen.
So combine this all together and we were having hours and hours of fun in Bigscreen beta, playing ALL the time.
And then other people were joining in the room and they saw us playing and went : "Holy shit, how do you guys do that?".
So then we explained and added them on steam and we started playing smash brawl in VR with 3 people all the sudden.
Forward 5 months later:  I have now 150 new friends on steam, who all play dolphin emulator together with me, and whatever times I ever see fit when I log on. When I get on my pc, I receive a message from some dude I met in Vr asking me to either play Dragonball Z,super smash or some other of my favorite games.

Vr has been a lifechanger for me, where I was just simply scrolling fb,9Gag a bit in my free time, looking bored at youtube vids, I now log in my pc and get a Dolphin game going at less than 10 minutes, and you actually feel as if you are there with these people and having a blast.

To illustrate a little bit what I mean, but it's very hard to explain to someone how it actually is in Vr, here is a .Gif I made while playing Mortal Kombat X against a guy in space.

http://imgur.com/jvaNyAd
And here is a video from when some random dude started dancing on what is love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvnANF2hO4o

**Tldr**: If you miss playing local couch games such as Super Smash Brawl and the likes, get Virtual Reality and it will change your life as you know it.

EDIT: I created a guide on how to set up dolphin for netplay inside bigscreen. It's in dutch, but you will see all the options I selected anyway. https://www.docdroid.net/hujG6Ql/dolphin-netplay-guide.rtf.html

2 REPLIES 2

OpticKing
Expert Trustee
Cool, thanks for the guide, I'll probably try this later. I'm sure you're probably aware, but I'd like to link them anyway. I've been a bit addicted to playing old psp and gamecube/wii games in what feels like native vr from the vr modded emulators that 2eyeguy has made. I wish we could somehow combine the vr native feeling of the mods with the multiplayer (like all avatars are incorporated into one game world) you're enjoying, but I guess that's a pipe-dream and would be really hard if not impossible to implement. But just imagine mario kart wii or smash bros brawl in vr with 4-8 real life players (or many of the other gems the gamecube/wii/psp has to offer).

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/34903/dolphin-emulator-cv1-compatibility/p1

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/comment/360609#Comment_360609


Domitjen
Adventurer

OpticKing said:

Cool, thanks for the guide, I'll probably try this later. I'm sure you're probably aware, but I'd like to link them anyway. I've been a bit addicted to playing old psp and gamecube/wii games in what feels like native vr from the vr modded emulators that 2eyeguy has made. I wish we could somehow combine the vr native feeling of the mods with the multiplayer (like all avatars are incorporated into one game world) you're enjoying, but I guess that's a pipe-dream and would be really hard if not impossible to implement. But just imagine mario kart wii or smash bros brawl in vr with 4-8 real life players (or many of the other gems the gamecube/wii/psp has to offer).

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/34903/dolphin-emulator-cv1-compatibility/p1

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/comment/360609#Comment_360609




Well, I use the regular dolphin 5 in Bigscreen, but I do wonder if netplay works aswell in dolphinvr, being litteraly inside the game fighting with each other and perhaps voice through steam would be amazing aswell.