koifish

2 hours ago, RH said:

But I do want to come here and say that it’s still “GB History” as the game, I assume, was intended to have this mode and with a big patch and not significant re-engineering, you pulled off a 16-player game on Game Boys.

EDIT: On retrospective, I realize this confusion is my fault, because I didn't explain the game's history well enough in the first post. I've updated it above to reflect this oversight.

To expound, you are correct; I bring up 16 players specifically because the game was designed from the start to support it and is feature built for that purpose. See the interview below (incidentally, with the same programmer who was at the event last night):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100509163809/http://fb2k.retro-spect.ca/rchampagne.html

It does pay to point out that he does allude to 16 having been a chosen limit (probably to match MIDI Maze, which I've read also supported 16 players) and that he claims you could have done more. I've spoken with a team member about the question of going over 16 players, and while they argue in theory it may be possible, it would likely require substantial rework, as the game is programmed around the player ID/player count value being no higher than 16. I won't attempt to answer here whether or not it's possible to go above that, only that 16 was always the stated end point and so that was the goal.

As Robert states in that interview, the thing that caused this was that, when the game was developed, the team didn't have enough game boys to test up to 16 players. They were only ever able to get around 10 game boys. So as a result, they never were able to find the bug that resulted when you went for 16. Indeed, we have found the same; On the original release carts, you can do 8 players very stably, and 10 is manageable; It's when you get to the teens that things fall apart. So, it's possible that they got 10 working, and simply assumed the rest would as well, for want of not having time/money/etc. to buy more hardware. I could see if I could ask Robert about that for clarity, but that's my present hypothesis for why it was not found. The team only ever found it by going to the maximum player count, which is what led to the bug fix.

So to answer @Code Monkey's question, it's significant because it's finally hard proof of something that has been a known intended feature of the game since Robert's interview in 2005, but that disparate groups have since tried and failed to make work for what is now almost 20 years. Unless there is someone somewhere that has done the same things seen here, and who has simply not recorded and shared it in any way, then this is the world's first successful go of it, and the first to have recorded proof as well.

1 hour ago, Ferris Bueller said:

I feel like I saw a video of this last year attempted at a con? Congrats! Fun stuff.

Yeah, the same group (sans me) tried to do it at PRGE 2022, but it didn't work. That's how the bugs and hardware issues were eventually found. (The funny part is how I learned that they were doing this, only AFTER the expo was over. I was at the same con, at the same time, and literally down the hall from them, and I had no idea it was happening! The main organizer and I met years ago over FB 16 player, but we hadn't chatted in a while, and reconnected only after PRGE was over. Figures, right?)

I went ahead and uploaded a "home video" that I took of the event. Here you can clearly see the 16-player mode is live and working. No gameplay, however; This was just the first test run. We shut it down and then tried a few more times before getting it to run for a real game (the main problem we found was human interference; We found from experience that the safest way to start a game was to have everyone keep their GBs on the table, and then pick them up once the round started).

Anyway, I will link the proper video when it is finished, at a yet-unknown date. At least here you can see, yes, it's really real!

https://files.catbox.moe/uecrt1.MP4

I would wonder if the game was simply a demo disc shipped out to kiosks or to things like TGS (which would explain "Event" part of the name). Curious if there is a dump online already; Maybe you or someone else could check the game data files to find out if anything else is on there beyond the immediately visible.

Personally, the right one looks better to me. It's a difficult shape to convey though, isn't it? I thought I'd share this since I looked up "greyscale lemon" on image search. There are a lot of different images, but the key I'd think is trying to add a bit more visual distinctiveness to it. In this, for example, you can see the interior of the fruit. In some other examples, the pitting is done only in small amounts, or at the edges of the shape, which might make them stand out more (vs the entire surface being pitted).