So far the implementation works but there is no client, to test, set your network gamepad port to 55400 (just commited a fix that will set that by default) under network settings, and enable the gamepads for the players you want.

Should look like this:

I open one port for each controller, so:
player1 = 55400
player2 = 55401
player3 = 55402
etc.

Then you can use any tool to generate traffic to send a character array that will be converted to the bitmask of the pressed buttons.

For instance sending "128" will be converted to 128 (with atoi) which means "press d-pad right", i guess there could be a better representation, also a better representation will be needed to send analog inputs.

To test I included a small test program that will send "128", sleep for roughly 1 frame and send 128 again, this should make a character move forward

To use it on the same host just compile it (set your port to 55400 in RetroArch to make it easier) and just run it.

gcc -o udp-test libretro-common/utils/udp-test.c
chmod +x udp-test
./udp-test

Todo:

• support analogs
• support some kind of authorization
• make a builtin client in RetroArch (so one retroarch instance can control another one)
• add an authorization mechanism

Second part would be to hook up the built-in ffmpeg sink to be able to stream a non post processed framebuffer (and audio) to get some sort of streaming netplay ala GameStream co-op

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.