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Forum: Planet Ring

Topic: Planet Ring is Back Online!

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Neoblast
rank 7
Posted:
Sun Jun 09, 2013 6:23 pm
quote : #1
profile : pm
Posts: 59
Type: PAL
Finally, after all this time, IberDC is proud to present you what most of you already knew. The revival of Planet Ring as a Dreamcast online game, what we call “The EarthCall Project” . It has taken time, effort, and countless hours of testing and trial/error but it sure is worth it. The server software we developed is open source so you can learn from it, modify it or improve it as you like. It was coded using SDL, SDLNet and SQlite.



Planet Ring is an online Dreamcast game which features 4 multiplayer minigames, a messenger and a simple HTML like website system (TEML) to show the user pages about anything the server admin could imagine, including images. This was the first console game that had multiplayer gaming while voice chatting people all over the world. It was given away by the Official Dreamcast Magazine number 15 in the UK, it was also sold in stores in Europe. Some other countries like Spain got it for free with the microphone upon getting a certain ISP services.



Check the project’s site here https://code.google.com/p/earthcall-project/

In order to make the connection to our server as easy as possible, there’s a loader you can use to connect to our server, you can get the loader here.
And ready to burn in here.

Check IberDc’s site here : http://www.dreamcast.es


Here's a video for one of the games, there will be more coming soon
http://youtu.be/ZDyARFBFx5o

PLANET RING FEATURES

Minigames:

-Dorobo 2Players(voice chat) -> Trease hunt, guide the other player through a maze with your voice
-Splash 2Players(voice chat) ->Battleship like game where you have to sink all of your opponent’s ships while chatting
-Ball Bubble 4Players -> Get as many bubbles as possible and boycott the rest of the players
-Soar 32Players! -> Different race types using an air pod/ship

Other:

-Messenger system
-TEML
-Online Rankings

Special Thanks to: Impulse, DCTM, BlueCrab, Fuzziqer, Brourke228, Chui, Mekanaizer, Eric and some more people…You know who you are!!!
 
lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Sun Jun 09, 2013 7:27 pm
quote : #2
profile : pm
Posts: 5902
Type: NTSC-U/C
Congrats to Neoblast and Indiket, the IberDc community and all those who helped with this project (such as DCTM). I have known about this for a while and it is great to see Planet Ring finally come back online. I usually tend to stay hush on such things until they actually happen as sometimes they never do. Getting a console game back online is not easy. This doesn't happen every day and it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.

Fortunatly, this time we can celebrate the return of this once lost Dreamcast Online game. It is unknown exactly when Planet Ring went offline, but I think it is safe to say that this game hasn't been experienced by many in well over a decade.

I would also like to point out that Planet Ring's restoration efforts are open source and open to the world. Anyone can run a server in addition to the primary stable central areas to play. I have personally always tried to promote the public release of software that should get Dreamcast games (or any game) back online. Years ago when Neoblast and I first spoke, we each both believed very strongly about this. What you see now is this mindset put into practice. Hard working members of the community, with the technical knowledge and drive to create something for the betterment of the community and video game history.

OC will eventually host another server option in addition to Neoblast's primary server, for the stability of the DC online community.

Once again, great job Neoblast and Indiket! Smile
  _________________
I'm already numero uno on Dark Helmet's hit list...
Neoblast
rank 7
Posted:
Sun Jun 09, 2013 7:29 pm
quote : #3
profile : pm
Posts: 59
Type: PAL
Thanks NIkon, hope everyone gets to enjoy this Very Happy

I think it was down around 2003. That's the last time I saw it online.
 
TheMytho
rank 28
Posted:
Sun Jun 09, 2013 7:44 pm
quote : #4
profile : pm
Posts: 588
Type: NTSC-U/C
Excellent work guys! Very Happy
 
Kbuzz
rank 23
Posted:
Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:10 pm
quote : #5
profile : pm
Posts: 473
Type: NTSC-U/C
As the DC seems to have garnered a larger post-Morten fanbase, I can imagine that there are a lot of people looking to get their first experience of Planet Ring. I know I am. I can't begin to thank everyone enough.
  _________________
Pso: Kingbuzzo lvl 80
QUake 3: [OC] Kingbuzzo
Nico0020
rank 11
Posted:
Mon Jun 10, 2013 2:44 am
quote : #6
profile : pm
Posts: 169
Type: NTSC-U
Totally stoked to see this finally happen. Only found out about the project about a month ago from DCtalk. Never got a chance to play this back in the day. Unfortunately I am living outside of the US now and will need to get a netopia setup going to give this a shot, as this was dialup only correct?. So it will be awhile before I can play it.

BTW Nikon, whatever happened to the "onlineforever" project section of the site? I remember you posting that some games were coming back online, was this what you were referring to?
 
Neoblast
rank 7
Posted:
Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:28 am
quote : #7
profile : pm
Posts: 59
Type: PAL
Netopia is the "easiest" way, apart from an actual dial up. Free dial up ISP should be dime a dozen there in the US, aren't there a lot?
That's the way I reccommend people play Planet Ring, although the netopia setup is good. The PC-DC one is the cheapest solution but it could take some time to get it working right.
 
lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Tue Jun 11, 2013 10:06 am
quote : #8
profile : pm
Posts: 5902
Type: NTSC-U/C
Nico0020 wrote:
BTW Nikon, whatever happened to the "onlineforever" project section of the site? I remember you posting that some games were coming back online, was this what you were referring to?

The OF Project page is still up at its old location, but I am planning on changing its scope and moving it. It will shift over to be a resource for all platforms and be an xrz87.org project instead of being tied specifically to OC. It would be an information resource and download repository for software to play games online. No message boards, just a resource.

There were many games that were going to come back online. Maybe they do someday, but the resources that I was collaborating with sort of fell off the map and have not been working on any code in quite sometime. There isn't anything I can do about this. In the past I made some promises to the community that more games would be coming back online. It is frustrating because I wasn't able to deliver, because I was reliant on other resources in order to make those promises a reality. Maybe the situation changes, but for the moment things are stalled.

---

Neoblast, how are you hosting your primary Planet Ring server? Just curious. Is it dedicated at a data center? or?
  _________________
I'm already numero uno on Dark Helmet's hit list...
Neoblast
rank 7
Posted:
Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:40 pm
quote : #9
profile : pm
Posts: 59
Type: PAL
Dedicated FreeBSD machine only for the server.
 
mcmonkey
rank 44
Posted:
Tue Jun 11, 2013 4:55 pm
quote : #10
profile : pm
Posts: 1314
Type: PAL
This one came out of the blue for me at least! There are copies of this game on Amazon for 1p, so I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later.

Can someone point me to where I can read about how it came back? I mean. Out of all the games that I would have assumed would have been able to come back online at some point in the future - Planet Ring isn't even on the list! It's just nuts!
  _________________
Pretty music wot i has made:
http://grandcanonicalensemble.bandcamp.com/
Neoblast
rank 7
Posted:
Tue Jun 11, 2013 11:21 pm
quote : #11
profile : pm
Posts: 59
Type: PAL
Inside of the server there's bit of info about that in the news board.

However if you can't play I might as well post the story here, it's worth a read and funny too..
 
fattony
rank 11
Posted:
Wed Jun 12, 2013 5:08 pm
quote : #12
profile : pm
Posts: 173
Type: NTSC-U/C
I`m confused on how exactly to connect this game. Is the thing you download a bootdisc like Utopia or does it have the Planet Ring on there already?
 
Neoblast
rank 7
Posted:
Wed Jun 12, 2013 5:13 pm
quote : #13
profile : pm
Posts: 59
Type: PAL
It's a loader to patch the original game to connect to the new server. WHich is down for maintenance anyway right now.
It will be up again tomorrow.
 
fattony
rank 11
Posted:
Wed Jun 12, 2013 9:15 pm
quote : #14
profile : pm
Posts: 173
Type: NTSC-U/C
So I need a disc of planet ring and a disc with the patch?
 
segadreamcaster
rank 37
Posted:
Thu Jun 13, 2013 1:28 am
quote : #15
profile : pm
Posts: 811
Type: NTSC-U/C
Amazing to see that it's all finally official....really looking forward to giving this a go as I never did get to play it Smile

Congrats to all concerned and thanks for all your time and effort....much appreciated Smile
  _________________
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PSO = Ryo or SEGADCER
Q3A, Starlancer
Max Pool = Segadcer
4x4 Evo = Segadreamcaster

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