== Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack Download ==

Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack - "Base" (~100MB uncompressed, ~50MB download) Mirror
Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack - "CD Expansion" (~14GB uncompressed, ~8GB download) Mirror
You can find more info about the Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack here.


== Original Post ==

I haven't been on in months, and found out today that the RGR plugin will be obsoleted at the end of the year with the discontinuation of the Flash plugin. In the end, this is a good thing overall, as Flash is a security nightmare (and honestly RGR never worked very well on low end machines, I speak from experience), but RGR netplay and the tournaments hosted for them (as wack as they, looking back on them after experiencing "proper" tournament formats with fighting games) are clearly important, and I think I have a decent long term solution that works for some of the fighting game communities I'm in.

Funnily enough, my suggestion is an emulator that the RGR already currently uses: mednafen. mednafen supports many different emulators (unlike Retroarch, it uses predetermined cores included with the emulator), and supports netplay with a couple simple commands for most systems (it has GB(C) and GBA cores, but doesn't support netplay as its not possible to emulate the link cable protocols strict timings over the internet, just to name a couple). Well mednafen does support most systems people play on netplay, like Turbo Grafx, NES, SNES, Genesis, and even PS1, it doesn't support all consoles currently in the RGR, like arcades games, or the N64, so different emulators would be needed for those.

The fighting game communities I'm in revolve around a specific game, naturally, and for the communities that use mednafen, we have a "netplay pack" zip file you can download, that includes mednafen and the game, and some instructions on how to connect to netplay, make it as easy as download, extract, and play. For example, here is the netplay pack we use in the Digimon Rumble Arena community. To adapt this same approach to Vizzed, all we'd have to do is make a list of our top netplay games as a community (obviously, Bomberman '94 is top of the list ), and include those games instead. I'd can easily make a "unofficial" Vizzed netplay pack, though I would probably run a poll for the best netplay games to include first

That's just the basic solution tho that doesn't require Davideo7 or any staff to agree with the approach. Of course, Davideo7 would probably like a method more central to the site, so a more exciting solution might be to make a Vizzed specific front end for mednafen. Something I forgot to mention before is that mednafen doesn't have a GUI, and has to be ran from the command line (Ex: mednafen "Digimon Rumble Arena.cue"), which might sound scary to some (tho I personally love the simplicity), but the upside to this is it gives people the creative freedom to make their own "front ends" for mednafen, hiding away the command line bit of mednafen, and letting you change all of the emulator's settings and launch games from a custom GUI. An example of the best front end I've seen for mednafen is MedLaunch, tho it is a bit outdated as it hasn't been updated in a few years (site: https://medlaunch.info/). It would take some dev time from Davideo7 or someone else, but it wouldn't be unfeasible to make a Vizzed specific mednafen front end that lets you log in to your Vizzed account, and access games from the RGR and play them on mednafen on your computer directly as a stand alone RGR client without the need to have a browser open (which would be much more resource efficient, a huge win for owners of low end laptops), and would make (almost) all of the RGR's games available to keep playing online over mednafen's netplay support. This shouldn't take a ton of work either (if we stopped with just implementing mednafen) which makes it a great low hanging fruit, tho of course, this could also be the start of a whole entire ground up "recreation" of RGR as a standalone program (using various emulators), depending on how much time Davideo7 or anyone helping can/want to take it.

The only thing I didn't really mention, is that mednafen's netplay uses a server/client model, which makes connecting to netplay very simple on the players end, but does require someone to host netplay servers to connect to. Thankfully, there are plenty of public netplay servers out there (I run a few of them myself!), and I'm pretty sure some community members have already set some up for us in the RGR's current netplay incarnation. I won't waste space here on how to set one up, or what public one's already exist, so I'll just link to some pages about it.
List of public mednafen netplay servers
My guide on setting up a netplay server

TL;DR: In the future, we can create a simple and sweet downloadable netplay pack of our favorites to keep playing netplay with each other post-2020, and perhaps we could use this idea as a base for what the RGR "plugin" looks like in the future.

== Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack ==

I got inpatient to wait on any replies, so I spend today putting this together. I present to you ~ The Unofficial Vizzed Neplay Pack~! Featuring some of Vizzed's best netplay hits, multiplayer gems, and other games! The pack is pretty straight forward: its all the below games bundled with the latest stable mednafen, and a readme containing information on how to connect to netplay. No setup, no configs, just download, extract, and play.

The pack contains a lot of PS1 games, and because PS1 games are much larger than cartridge games (a handful of MBs vs a few hundred MBs), I've divided the Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack into two parts: the "base" Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack, which includes cartridge games only, and the CD Expansion, which includes all the CD based games (and just the CD games! You need the "base" pack for the emulator!), consisting of mostly PS1 games. The reason for separating the PS1 games into their own "expansion" zip file is obvious once you see the files sizes: the netplay pack with the "CD Expansion" is a whopping ~14GB, but just the base netplay pack is ~100MB, about 140x smaller. If you have really slow download speeds, or are low on disc space, then you should stick to only the base netplay pack, but if you have good download speeds or plenty of patience, definitely be sure to get the "CD Expansion"~!


== List of Games ==

This list includes all games that have ever been played in an official Vizzed netplay tournament (minus any that don't feature 2+ players playing simultaneously), some of the games from the "looking to play ____" thread, and some games I like or thought would make good additions to this netplay pack. If you have any suggestions for games I should add to this pack, let me know!

NES
- Balloon Fight
- Battletoads & Double Dragon - The Ultimate Team
- Chinese Checkers
- Clu Clu Land
- Contra
- Dpad Hero 2
- Dr. Mario
- Ice Climber
- Marble Madness
- Mario Bros.
- Super Dodge Ball (4 Player Hack)
- Super Spike V'Ball
- Tecmo Super Bowl
- Urban Champion
- Wario's Woods
- Wit's

Turbo Graphics
- Bomberman '93
- Bomberman '94
- Final Match Tennis
- Hit the Ice - VHL the Official Video Hockey League
- Motoroader MC*

Sega Genesis
- Columns III - Revenge of Column
- Marble Madnes
- Sonic The Hedgehog
- Streets of Rage
- Streets of Rage
- Sunset Rider
- Super Smash T
- Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

Super Nintendo
- Bakukyuu Renpatsu!! Super B-Daman
- Battletoads in Battlemaniacs
- Donkey Kong Country
- Kirby Super Star
- Metal Warriors
- Micro Machines 2 - Turbo Tournament
- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Fighting Edition
- Ms. Pac-Man
- NBA Jam - Tournament Edition
- Pocky & Rocky 2
- Sailormoon S - Jougai Rantou! Shuyaku Soudatsusen
- Street Fighter II Turbo - Hyper Fighting
- Super Bomberman 4 (English Translation)
- Super Mario Kart
- Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers
- Tecmo Super Bowl
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Tournament Fighters
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV - Turtles in Time
- Tetris & Dr. Mario
- Tetris Attack
- The Peace Keepers
- Tiny Toon Adventures - Wacky Sports Challenge
- Vs. Collection
- Wario's Woods

PlayStation*
- Bloody Roar II*
- Bomberman World*
- Bust-a-Move 4*
- Cool Boarders 2*
- Crash Bash*
- Crash Team Racing*
- Digimon Rumble Arena*
- Gran Turisimo*
- Jet Moto 2*
- Marvel vs. Capcom - Clash of Super Heroes*
- Micro Machines V3*
- Micro Maniacs Racing*
- Quake II*
- Shaolin*
- Soul Blade*
- Street Figher Alpha 3*
- Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo*
- Team Buddies*
- Tecmo Stackers*
- Tekken 3*
- Tetris Plus*
- Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2*
- Twisted Metal 2*
- X-Men vs. Street Fighter*

*Available in seperate "UVNP - CD Expansion" zip


== Downloads ==

Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack - "Base" (~100MB uncompressed, ~50MB download) Mirror
Unofficial Vizzed Netplay Pack - "CD Expansion" (~14GB uncompressed, ~8GB download) Mirror