Getting Mario Kart Double Dash Lan mode to work with Devolution -$100 bounty

[BlackTSQ]

Hey Guys,

so I'm working on a Project to put 4 Wii's, a mini switch and a HMDI Multiviewer in one compact shell for up to 16 player Mario Kart double dash.
You can follow along that project on here, although i haven't really started on the hardware side.

Now at first i was trying to get it to work using nintendont's bba emulation, but MKDD starts lagging at 3 consoles and gets unplayable with 4 consoles connected together.

Then i stumbled accross the post about the cracked devolution and thought i'd give that a try. The Problem is that i can't get two consoles running devolution to find each other in mkdd LAN Mode, but i CAN get one devolution console to join a console running nintendont. So best i could do right now is having 3 consoles running nintendont and one running devolution which already improves performance massively.

Here's a Video of that:

Spoiler

I have all consoles connected to an unmanaged switch with static ip Addresses in the same subnet without anything else connected. I also tried it with them connected to my router with Wifi and Lan but nothing helped to get two devolution consoles to recognise each other.
I also did some wireshark logging which shows that the devolution consoles aren't sending any broadcast messages. The logs are attached.

I would really appreciate some help to get it running. I think it would be a gamechanger if it was possible to play mkdd Lan with more consoles without having to shell out for multiple Gamcube BBA's.

Thanks in Advance!

Post automatically merged: Oct 19, 2023

I'd spend a 100 bucks if someone is able to get 2 or more devolution systems to connect in mkdd, in a for everyone reproducable manner!

 

[Tsuyoshi]

Now at first i was trying to get it to work using nintendont's bba emulation, but MKDD starts lagging at 3 consoles and gets unplayable with 4 consoles connected together.

I have all consoles connected to an unmanaged switch with static ip Addresses in the same subnet without anything else connected.

I also did some wireshark logging which shows that the devolution consoles aren't sending any broadcast messages.

My first instinct would really be to try to fix whatever is going wrong with Nintendont. Just from your message, it seems like the problem is with Nintendont sending broadcast packets; perhaps it's your switch that can't handle that? The reason I suggest this is because I know I've heard of people hooking up 4 Wii's to play Double Dash before. They didn't indicate there were any problems doing this.

 

[emmanu888]

Wouldn't it be simpler to setup if all four consoles ran Nintendont instead of having one Devolution console and three Nintendont consoles?

 

[Disorarara]

Wouldn't it be simpler to setup if all four consoles ran Nintendont instead of having one Devolution console and three Nintendont consoles?

The OP post says 4 consoles running Nintendont runs into performance issues

 

[BlackTSQ]

My first instinct would really be to try to fix whatever is going wrong with Nintendont. Just from your message, it seems like the problem is with Nintendont sending broadcast packets; perhaps it's your switch that can't handle that? The reason I suggest this is because I know I've heard of people hooking up 4 Wii's to play Double Dash before. They didn't indicate there were any problems doing this.

They're just sending ARP Packages via Broadcast to identify themselfs and other consoles, which the devolution systems don't seem to do, thats my guess why devolution systems can't find each other.

The problem with nintendo is that it has a small overhead when using the bba emulation which ends adding up with each console which gets noticable at 3 systems and gets unplayable at 4 systems.

Ofcourse it would be best if the problem gets fixed in nitendont but i feel like that requires to completely rewrite the bba emulation.

I have tried a lot of different network configurations (connected to wifi router, switch connected to router, crossover cable) but nothing worked.

Wouldn't it be simpler to setup if all four consoles ran Nintendont instead of having one Devolution console and three Nintendont consoles?

As mentioned, MKDD get's unplayable when using 4 consoles running nintendont. And multiple people confirmed that to me aswell. It also got reported as issue on nintendont's Github but it got closed seemingly without getting fixed.

 

[Exidous]

I don't have anything like a proposed solution, but there are some potential resources you could explore, and it sounds like there's more useful testing you could do to narrow down exactly what needs to be coded in anticipation of someone arriving who could help .

Potential resources:

https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/issues/144 (famously arrogant Devolution author specifically claims "Never had a problem with wiis not seeing each other")

As to testing, if you haven't already, try and record the results of the other permutations - e.g.

Nintendont joining Devolution (sounds impossible because Devo doesn't 'announce')
Can real hardware (either software) see Dolphin or vice versa on the same network?
EDIT: can 1 Nintendont 3 Devo work? Do the non-host Wiis need to 'see' each other?

 

[bobmcjr]

I don't have anything like a proposed solution, but there are some potential resources you could explore, and it sounds like there's more useful testing you could do to narrow down exactly what needs to be coded in anticipation of someone arriving who could help .

Potential resources:

https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/issues/144 (famously arrogant Devolution author specifically claims "Never had a problem with wiis not seeing each other")

As to testing, if you haven't already, try and record the results of the other permutations - e.g.

Nintendont joining Devolution (sounds impossible because Devo doesn't 'announce')
Can real hardware (either software) see Dolphin or vice versa on the same network?

Honestly, perhaps a regression in the last released version of Devo?
I do have MKDD, but I don't have multiple Wii's to try older versions on me at the moment.

(I must say, that last comment on the issue from 2020 is quite amusing).



In the mean time, could you possibly send those raw ARP packets across the switch with a 5th device pretending to be the others? e.g. capture the announce packets from Nintendont, and replay them while they're all running Devolution?

Have you tried Kirby Air Ride for the heck of it?


Edit:
After some light poking around gc-forever, seems like this is a common issue, and that only tueidj has ever been really known to make it work? That said, he also seems to have only tried it in a wifi router configuration with DHCP enabled.

maybe his particular router setup would cause more ARP traffic to go around the network. I'm assuming you've tried it with a router, but a more complete packet capture with DHCP could be interesting. I'm wondering if the network logging causes an ARP to be sent out very early and then cached or something so it never shows up again? Maybe try disabling it if you haven't.

and man, he was really quite the charmer during his last years online under that alias wasn't he

 

[BlackTSQ]

Honestly, perhaps a regression in the last released version of Devo?

The only other version of Devolution i could find is r239 and sadly lan play wasn't integrated in that one.

In the mean time, could you possibly send those raw ARP packets across the switch with a 5th device pretending to be the others? e.g. capture the announce packets from Nintendont, and replay them while they're all running Devolution?

thought of that aswell, just need to figure out how to do that. I installed a custom router on my raspberry pi (openWRT). Hope to be able to do some shenanigans with that, but gotta do some research before. Need to install TCPdump then i should be able to remote capture all direct traffic aswell.

Have you tried Kirby Air Ride for the heck of it?

Trying another game is definitly a good idea, will give that a shot.

Nintendont joining Devolution (sounds impossible because Devo doesn't 'announce')

There's not really a way to decide which console joins which afaik. I managed to get a connection between a devo system and a nintendont system when starting the lan search on the devo system and when i started it on the nintendont one.

Can real hardware (either software) see Dolphin or vice versa on the same network?

need to try that again. I tried it before, but i think i had some wrong settings in dolphin, cause i wasn't finding any systems on dolphin, but from reports of others it should work.

EDIT: can 1 Nintendont 3 Devo work? Do the non-host Wiis need to 'see' each other?

1 nintendont systems and multiple devo systems behave weirdly. I tested with 2 devo Systems and one nintendont system with the result that nintendont showed 3 Systems connected, one devo system showed 2 Systems connected and the other one was still at the countdown screen.

Post automatically merged: Oct 23, 2023

Ok, managed to get the capture from the router now.
It seems like devolution is sending it's ARP announcment when the game launches and not at the LAN Play screen.
Tried to launch one devolution system first until it's at the lan screen counting down and only then start devolution on the second system.
Sadly that didn't work either.

Wireshark captures are attached, there are also all logs from the devolution system captured by wireshark.
Edit: Uploaded the wrong captures will upload the right ones later today.

Still gotta try the other suggestions, but it's already late where i live and i just spent way to long to get my network capture setup working

 

[AndroSynth]

Ahh, you've beaten me to the punch here BlackTSQ, an idea that I've had in the back of my mind for quite a while. Have the HDMI multiplexer, but I've only got 2 Wiis at the moment, and haven't had time to even fiddle with two of them networked.

If I find some time (don't hold your breath) I will be glad to assist and combine efforts any way I can. Other than that, glad to see you working on it, and best of luck!

 

[BlackTSQ]

Here are the correct Wireshark logs captured directly from the router.
Was kinda busy the last couple days, so i didn't get much further with testing, but will keep all of you updated

Post automatically merged: Nov 1, 2023

So i tested Kirby Airride now, but it shows exactly the same behaviour as mkdd. A nintendont and a devolution system can connect to each other but two devolution systems can't..

 

[BlackTSQ]

ok.. now i tried recording the arp packages while two nintendont systems connect on mkdds LAN Screen and resend them while i have the mkdd lan screen open in devolution on the same consoles.

Really hoped that this would work, but sadly the devolution system once again cant find each other...

attached the wireshark log again.

 

[Exidous]

If Devo only announces early (and ultimately not enough), that is theoretically sufficient in certain network configurations. The Devo author specifically said he tried it with "different routers" so there was presumably dhcp and other protocols running, not just Wii-to-Wii over a (non-DHCP) switch like it sounds like you've tried. I don't want to discount the possibility that the Devo author was full of shit, but it's worth testing.

I suspect if you want to artificially send an arp packet to facilitate Devo working, you want that theoretical Devo packet (it sounds like you captured), not a nintendont one, which may be different in some way. In any event, we know that Devo instances fail to perform any meaningful networking function across other clients when they receive Nintendont packages (why only 3 nintendont 1 devo has worked, not 2-2, for example).

The other (non-tueidj-is-full-of-shit) possibility is that Devo doesn't generate or need the arp packets under certain network configurations (some dhcp routers?)

Disregarding Devo for a moment, to the extent Nintendont is sputtering because it's generating the ARP packages... it may be possible to save those (as you have) and remove the sputtering ARP-sending-code from a custom build of Nintendont. Then just artificially push the arp packets from something on the same network (your non-DHCP switch is probably best for this scenario). There are a lot more unknowns with this proposed Nintendont solution than just testing Devo though, so I recommend testing Devo more first.

 

[BlackTSQ]

If Devo only announces early (and ultimately not enough), that is theoretically sufficient in certain network configurations. The Devo author specifically said he tried it with "different routers" so there was presumably dhcp and other protocols running, not just Wii-to-Wii over a (non-DHCP) switch like it sounds like you've tried. I don't want to discount the possibility that the Devo author was full of shit, but it's worth testing.

I suspect if you want to artificially send an arp packet to facilitate Devo working, you want that theoretical Devo packet (it sounds like you captured), not a nintendont one, which may be different in some way. In any event, we know that Devo instances fail to perform any meaningful networking function across other clients when they receive Nintendont packages (why only 3 nintendont 1 devo has worked, not 2-2, for example).

The other (non-tueidj-is-full-of-shit) possibility is that Devo doesn't generate or need the arp packets under certain network configurations (some dhcp routers?)

Disregarding Devo for a moment, to the extent Nintendont is sputtering because it's generating the ARP packages... it may be possible to save those (as you have) and remove the sputtering ARP-sending-code from a custom build of Nintendont. Then just artificially push the arp packets from something on the same network (your non-DHCP switch is probably best for this scenario). There are a lot more unknowns with this proposed Nintendont solution than just testing Devo though, so I recommend testing Devo more first.

Thanks for your reply. Till now i only tested it with capturing the arp packages from nintendont, and send them as the same console which later was running devolution.
But capturing the arp packages devo sends at launch is definitly something worth trying. Altough i'm not even sure if it's the missing ARP packages that are the problem, but thats the main difference i could see in the wireshark logs.

So you're saying i should only use the none dhcp switch for that? I mainly set up the OpenWRT router, cause i thought that that would be the easiest way to send packages in a different name / MAC Address.

Anyways, will try it first with my current setup (capturing and sending the packages from the router). And if that doesn't work, i'll set up a linux client and try it with that (:

 

[bobmcjr]

Thanks for your reply. Till now i only tested it witch capturing the arp packages from nintendont, and send them as the same console which later was running devolution.
But capturing the arp packages devo sends at launch is definitly something worth trying. Altough i'm not even sure if it's the missing ARP packages that are the problem, but thats the main difference i could see in the wireshark logs.

So you're saying i should only use the none dhcp switch for that? I mainly set up the OpenWRT router, cause i thought that that would be the easiest way to send packages in a different name / MAC Address.

Anyways, will try it first with my current setup (capturing and sending the packages from the router). And if that doesn't work, i'll set up a linux client and try it with that (:

I'm assuming you've tried delaying booting the subsequent Devolution Wii's.
e.g. boot the first one and wait until it's in MKDD, then start booting another Devolution.

I forgot, did you try disabling wifi logging? The sample loader I believe forces wifi logging, but if you boot Devolution from the current version of USBLoader GX as it is now, wifi logging should be disabled.

 

[BlackTSQ]

I'm assuming you've tried delaying booting the subsequent Devolution Wii's.
e.g. boot the first one and wait until it's in MKDD, then start booting another Devolution.

Yeah tried that already.
Disable wifi logging is something i have yet to try. But definitly will test that aswell!

 

[devyn41]

This is really cool, I also wanted to have the option for 16 player double dash and didn't think of something like this, I went official with 4 gamecubes on a multiviewer with the broadband adapters.

 

[Exidous]

Thanks for your reply. Till now i only tested it with capturing the arp packages from nintendont, and send them as the same console which later was running devolution.
But capturing the arp packages devo sends at launch is definitly something worth trying. Altough i'm not even sure if it's the missing ARP packages that are the problem, but thats the main difference i could see in the wireshark logs.

So you're saying i should only use the none dhcp switch for that? I mainly set up the OpenWRT router, cause i thought that that would be the easiest way to send packages in a different name / MAC Address.

Anyways, will try it first with my current setup (capturing and sending the packages from the router). And if that doesn't work, i'll set up a linux client and try it with that (:

The main reason we're talking about DHCP is @bobmcjr 's insight about what the author of devolution said years ago about successfully running multiple (presumably Devo) MKDDs across 'various' routers. If tueidj was not full of shit, maybe it was the DHCP that made it work. And this is potentially the simplest solution - you just have to change your network configuration.

The pushing arp packets idea is a step above that - maybe you'll need another system on the network pushing artificial packets to make it work. You're absolutely correct that we're not sure this is the issue. Frankly, it's much more likely a symptom of Devolution not having functional BBA emulation rather than the one thing that needs to change for your configuration to work. But the advantage here is this is the second-simplest solution. It sounds like a batch file could fix this, if the sole Devolution issue is missing announce function.

I want to emphasize here that Dolphin sounds like an unknown worth testing. Before code gets rebuilt it's worth trying the third sister.

The solutions beyond those involve rebuilding either/both Devolution and Nintendont's BBA emulation, or perhaps modifying MKDD isos (but to achieve similar ends).

 

[BlackTSQ]

The main reason we're talking about DHCP is @bobmcjr 's insight about what the author of devolution said years ago about successfully running multiple (presumably Devo) MKDDs across 'various' routers. If tueidj was not full of shit, maybe it was the DHCP that made it work. And this is potentially the simplest solution - you just have to change your network configuration.

The pushing arp packets idea is a step above that - maybe you'll need another system on the network pushing artificial packets to make it work. You're absolutely correct that we're not sure this is the issue. Frankly, it's much more likely a symptom of Devolution not having functional BBA emulation rather than the one thing that needs to change for your configuration to work. But the advantage here is this is the second-simplest solution. It sounds like a batch file could fix this, if the sole Devolution issue is missing announce function.

I want to emphasize here that Dolphin sounds like an unknown worth testing. Before code gets rebuilt it's worth trying the third sister.

The solutions beyond those involve rebuilding either/both Devolution and Nintendont's BBA emulation, or perhaps modifying MKDD isos (but to achieve similar ends).

I already tested DHCP with 2 different routers. My standard Cisco Modem / Router and OpenWRT with dhcp activated. Did set the Wii's IP addresses to auto aswell of course.

Regarding dolphin, in the thread of gc4ever they say that they got it working with dolphin as good as i got it working with nintendont. You can add one devolution system to multiple dolphin sessions, but not more.

It's worth noting that someone on discord showed me an old video of him having 2 devolution sessions connected. One running on a Wii and one on a Wii U.
But sadly he doesn't remember if he had any particular network setup.

 

[Exidous]

Regarding dolphin, in the thread of gc4ever they say that they got it working with dolphin as good as i got it working with nintendont. You can add one devolution system to multiple dolphin sessions, but not more.

Does that mean 4 Dolphin MKDD have the same issue as your 4 Nintendont's? That is, there's a lag buildup/desynch problem presumably linked to an issue in Dolphin's BBA emulation.

Alternatively, if 4 Dolphin don't have that problem, the BBA emulation code (which I'm under the impression was ported to Nintendont) isn't itself suspect, an issue may have been created in how it was ported.

It's worth noting that someone on discord showed me an old video of him having 2 devolution sessions connected. One running on a Wii and one on a Wii U.
But sadly he doesn't remember if he had any particular network setup.

That's interesting.

My initial reaction is that, if authentic, this implies Wii U running in vWii mode (as it must to run Devolution) is providing a missing piece that Devolution needs for your desired configuration. I also notice that in the video, it failed to connect initially, when both were started on the LAN menu at the same time. The Wii U showed 'looking for' while the Wii choked on establishing LAN link. When retrying it on the Wii, it worked.

I suspect this means that 3 Wii U 1 Wii all Devolution would work.

Does anyone know if vWii mode is fully documented/understood? Did the scene ever figure out what's going on under the hood? If we understand what it's doing, AND the results of this video can be replicated, that could be useful guidance.

 

[eene]

Hello

I have exactly the same problem

Best i can do is: GC (with BBA) + 2 Wii (Nintendont) + 1 Wii (Devolution)

GC (with BBA) + 3 Wii (Nintendont) = too much lag

I can add USD 100 to the bounty ( total, USD 200 ) [ to get 2 or more devolution systems to connect in mkdd, in a for everyone reproducable manner! ]

=)