eduke32 multiplayer on RPi Zero W?

[BondenSpey]

Hi all,

Sorry for this rather long problem description.

I would like to run eduke32 multiplayer games on Raspberry Pi Zero W.
I have currently installed the Retropie-setup (v. 4.5.16) and the ’eduke32’ port (version R8090) on my RPi Zero W.

Since earlier I enjoy playing eduke32 multiplayer on my Raspberry Pi 3B +.
But for some reason I can’t get it working on my RPi Zero W.

On my RPi 3b+ (Retropie-setup 4.4, eduke32 R6671) it is possible to edit the ”emulators.cfg” to start a multiplayer game.

’/opt/retropie/configs/ports/duke3d/emulators.cfg’

Hosting or joining multiplayer simply looks like this:

Hosting a game:

eduke32 = "/opt/retropie/ports/eduke32/eduke32 -j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d -server"
default = "eduke32"

Joining a game:

eduke32 = "/opt/retropie/ports/eduke32/eduke32 -j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d -connect <IP_ADDRESS>"
default = "eduke32"

Another way of connecting to a multiplayer game is to bring down the eduke32 in-game console and type ’connect’ with the result output: ’connects to a multiplayer game’

But now, after installing a newer version on my RPi Zero W (eduke32 R8090), I think that the ability to play local multiplayer games may have been removed or is disabled for some reason.
First, the place to put input parameters seems to have been moved to ’RetroPie/roms/ports/Duke Nukem 3D.sh’

’RetroPie/roms/ports/Duke Nukem 3D.sh’

#!/bin/bash
"/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 _PORT_ "duke3d" "-j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d/ -j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d/ -addon 0”

However, if I try to add for example ”-server” in order to host a multiplayer game, it seems that the parameter is ignored when eduke32 starts up.

#!/bin/bash
"/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 _PORT_ "duke3d" "-j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d/ -j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d/ -addon 0 -j/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d -server"

(Same if using ’-connect <IP_ADDRESS>’ instead of ’-server’. It will be ignored)

Also in this later version on RPi Zero W, when typing ’connect’ in the in-game console, there is an error:
’”connect” is not a valid command or cvar’

So it seems that the multiplayer functionality has either been removed or is disabled in this version.

How can I run eduke32 multiplayer on RPi Zero W? Please help! Thanks.

—-
RPi Zero W
eduke32 R8090
Retro Pi-setup script: ”Version: 4.5.16 (rpi 1 - running on Raspbian GNU/Linux 9.11 (stretch))”

My older system setup (where eduke32 multiplayer actually works):
RPi 3b+
eduke32 R6671
Retro Pi-setup script: ”Version: 4.4”
——

[BuZz]

Netcode is currently disabled.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/commit/1f0b4484

disabled netcode due to r7242 introducing a major bump in memory requirements for the executable to even dynamically link on RPI3; will investigate later, or worst case scenario perhaps we can provide an alternate port launcher with revision r7241 or earlier for netplay only. (r7242)

[BuZz]

It will be revisited in the future. It may have already been resolved upstream, but I don't have time currently to look into this.

[BondenSpey]

Thanks a lot for your answer, and for possibly looking in to this. Me and probably also others would really appreciate a fix. 👍

[psyke83]

I've investigated the latest build of eduke32, and it appears that multiplayer is broken even between two Windows machines. Judging from the wiki, this is not entirely unexpected.

In order for multiplayer to work, it may be necessary to revert to an older build, which is not ideal due to older versions having multiple issues with the open-source drivers used by the RPI4. An alternative could also be Eduke32-OldMP. I'll take a look at that soon, but can't make any promises, especially if this fork shares the same large memory overhead for multiplayer as the newer mainline builds.

[BondenSpey]

Thanks a lot.

By the way. Is there any work around, I am thinking of for example being able to point out a specific (older) version of a binary to install?
I guess this could be good also in the case when several clients happen to run not the latest version of a Ported game (multiplayer), and then a new client installs the game but runs into compatibility issues when joining the multiplayer game.

BR