FightCade vs. Retroarch (?)

[Pee wee]

Hi guys,

I hope you are all well. I think we all remember with nostalgia the time of the arcade games. I wonder which is the best emulator or the most recommended to play online. Which is your favorite? I think Fightcade uses GGPO. I have read that Retroarch is better because it synchronizes the game, I am not sure.

Appreciate any opinion & clarification

Thank you in advance.

[Anubis]

I would not know, since I don't play either games online (retro or new), but as emulator, I do use RetroArch a lot, with RecalBox on RPi400 and with Launchbox as front end on Win11 computer. I like having one setup across different platforms and easy integration with front ends.

[BeamCoder]

I would say Fightcade is the one you should use if you want to play retro arcade fighting games online with people. As you say, it implements GGPO/Rollback which as of now is the best network system to play fighting games. Since it's more popular for fighting game players you won't have difficulty finding people to play with. I wish Amiga emulators with online multiplayer implement rollback netcode. Or maybe have Amiga be in Fightcade since they seem to be open to adding emulators into it in their about page https://www.fightcade.com/about

Best article I know about rollback netcode https://ki.infil.net/w02-netcode.html

I don't know though if playing other genre's besides fighting games is a great experience because rollback netcode is, afaik, made to have great experience online with fighting games which are 1 versus 1. I do see some people play 2 player co-op games.

[gimbal]

I didn't know what rollback netcode was. But now reading about it, it seems to me you can't just implement that in an emulator and it'll automatically apply to any game run in it. It seems you would have to have patches for individual games to make that work specifically for that game, much like a Mame environment could do. Otherwise the emulator would have to sort of know "Oh, this is a one on one fighting game so I'll use these prediction algorithms".

[BeamCoder]

Don't know the internals of Fightcade but since they said they support 8000+ games, I don't think it's entirely patching of individual games. Fightcade uses GGPO for their netcode. You could look at the GGPO source code to see how it works https://github.com/pond3r/ggpo

[gimbal]

Mmm no, I don't have the big brain that allows me to look at code and then see the Matrix in it. I don't see gobs of prediction logic in there though so I guess I was overthinking it when I was reading the theory.

[Pee wee]

Many thanks for your comment, Anubis, BeamCoder, and gimbal. I really appreciate your clarification, BeamCoder.

Cheers!