Hi Everyone,
Originally, I wanted to start registration today, but I'm pushing this off until this Friday, October 19th. In turn, I will be extending registration until Friday, November 9th.
The reason for a 3 week registration period is 2 main points:
- King of 94 is the last weekend of October, and I would like to give those newcomers playing in the tournament a chance to join the league.
- We are moving away from Gens/ZSNES emulators, and going with the RetroArch frontend with Genesis Plus GX and SNES9x as the cores for Genesis and SNES. Instead of using the emulator/Hamachi combination, we will be going with RetroArch + core + netplay server. Netplay is very easy to setup and this setup eliminates the desync issues that have plagued poor connections in the past. The 3 weeks will allow some time to for everyone to become familiar with using the new combination.
As of right now, the Genesis Plus GX core requires that both players use the same platform (Windows vs. Windows, or Mac vs. Mac) for Netplay. All people who play Genesis online have Windows PCs, so no change here. Hopefully in the future, it will allow for cross-platform play. Also, the Genesis Plus GX core has way more accurate emulation than Gens, and feels more like the real hardware.
The SNES9x core allows for cross-platform play too(Mac vs. Windows), so any combination will work. This has been tested.
Uploading games will be the same procedure, so no change there.
The most confusing thing about setup will be controller configuration. I'm trying to write a program that can help in this aspect. But, many people will not have an issue; RetroArch comes with preset controller configurations (autoconfig) for many popular controllers. So this step can be skipped in most cases. If you have a controller that it doesn't recognize, the controller will have to be configured one time, then it can be saved. RetroArch uses a "universal" controller, with a layout like an SNES controller. So SNES users will have no problem setting up the controller, but for Genesis it could be slightly confusing, as the button map is not how you would assume it to be.
I will be uploading packages that can be used to install RetroArch on nhl94online.com later this week, and they can be accessed from the main page. The package will include RetroArch, the ROMs for classic, a customized config file to eliminate the need to setup some hotkeys, and the cores. There will be separate packages for Mac and Windows. Stay tuned for more info!
Check these threads out for some info on how to set up: