When fighting enthusiasts were introduced to online gaming (sup Xband), everyone was amazed by this new milestone which for the first time ever, expanded the competitive userbase beyond your friends around the block. And with the advent of high-speed connections (DSL, Cable, T1), one would think that latency would be a thing of the past, right? If only that were true. Lag is one of the number one reasons that allegedly has been a major turn-off for most diehard players.

This has prompted the launch of GGPO.net, (created by co-SRK founder Tony Cannon), which every single fighting fan not only should seriously pay close attention to its development. Do you dream of a world where you can finally enjoy lag-free online battles? Than you need to support GGPO.

GGPO.net’s primary objective is to present a new approach to fighting games. Tony explains:

Traditional networking algorithms used to compensate for network latency result in either slower than normal gameplay or an excessive amount of delay (or lag) tacked onto the beginning of each move. GGPO.net uses a novel way to hide latency which lets the game run at full speed without adding any delay to any of your moves. So your timing doesn’t change and combos come out like butter. It’s almost like playing head-to-head in your living room!

I know what you’re thinking: “Whoo, that means I can enjoy all my CPS2 and CPS3 favorites online, right?” Well, ideally - yes. We contacted a member of the GGPO team and they’ve revealed that basically [any emulation title] will work with the application. For the moment, Alpha 2 is the only title that’s currently being supported.

Currently the project is in its alpha phase - meaning users can expect to encounter a few bugs (i.e. crashes, resets, etc) during the matchmaking process. As a longtime SRK supporter, it’s great to see the fighting community stepping up to address something that corporate developers should have started LONG ago. I am told the code is “very good” so I am definitely looking forward to getting a test-run first hand once the beta stage is up and running.

[Via GGPO.net]