An unprecedented entry was submitted to the SegaXtreme Showcase this year: Coup, a homebrew game that not only features six-player simultaneous online play but also crossplay with a Web version.
Farkus submitted Coup to the Showcase in April and you can download it from Mega.nz here or from GitHub here.
It’s a video game recreation of the Coup card game, a social game in which you try to deceive your friends and be the last person standing. Each card has abilities, some of which counter each other’s, and knowing all those abilities plays in to players’ decisions to bluff about having them or baiting your opponent into thinking you’re bluffing about the cards you have. It’s a lot of mind games.
To make it easier to remember all of those abilities and rules, Farkus and his fellow developer Julian included a screen that explains each card’s ability that can be accessed at any time. It makes it a lot easier to make decisions, especially when you’re new to Coup.
Coup is one of two homebrew games Farkus entered into the Showcase. The other is an update of Slinga’s Disasteroids game from 2023. Both of them feature online play using the latest version of the NetLink Tunnel and a server Farkus set up for lobbies. Coup is even cross-compatible between the Saturn version and a Web version.
“On behalf of Team Coup, our submission is Coup, based on the popular card game, is the first publicly released Sega Saturn homebrew title to feature NetLink support,” Farkus said in his SegaXtreme submission post.
Technically, Coup is the second publicly released Saturn homebrew game with NetLink support. Knight0fDragon entered his Unnamed Shooter App game into the SegaXtreme Homebrew Competition three years ago that featured NetLink play over the Tunnel. That was only two players at once, though — Coup supports six.
“As a groundbreaking proof of concept, it allows SEVERAL Saturn consoles to connect concurrently for online multiplayer,” Farkus wrote about Coup. “Furthermore, it features full cross-play compatibility, enabling Sega Saturn users to compete against players using the web app or mobile devices at saturncoup.duckdns.org.”
Coup accomplished six-player online multiplayer by using a lobby that connects to a server Farkus set up. To support that lobby, Joe, aka SEGARPGFan, updated the NetLink Tunnel software. To play Coup with it:
- DreamPi users: Manually update netlink.py from https://github.com/eaudunord/Netlink/tree/main/tunnel then delete noautoupdates.txt from /boot
- PC tunnel users: Run_tunnel.bat to retrieve update
“HUGE THANKS to eaudunord / SEGA RPG FAN who has just pushed a new update for NetLink/DreamPi adding native support for Saturn NetLink homebrew games Coup and Disasteroids!!” Farkus said in Discord.
Coup is one of 14 original games submitted to the SegaXtreme Sega Saturn 31st Anniversary Showcase. You can read more about them and the showcase’s other submissions here.
Coup’s development
Some may not find Farkus and Julian’s development methods agreeable, though. That’s because they used the controversial Claude AI to do a lot of heavy lifting, something they’ve been very open about.
“In fact, 99% of this game was written by AI including the network stack,” Farkus said on Discord back in March when the game was first being developed. Even the animated character portraits and other artwork in the game were generated by AI.
But they insist they couldn’t have made the game or its portable NetLink code without Claude.
“I actually can’t code at all… and hardly read it,” Farkus said. “But with AI, I can suddenly do a lot. But knowing how to prompt is key. It takes practice and the right reference material.”
Julian said when they first began development, the code Claude generated was completely useless. “It took a lot of trial and error and knowing where to point it,” he said. “It lies a lot and will send you down paths that lead nowhere but it’s still faster than me not having it.”
Once Julian set up a basic chat room experiment, Farkus pointed Claude at the NetLink code. “Shockingly on the first prompt it built an initial version of Coup that was all text based but actually connected and was semi-playable over the internet,” Farkus said. “It was a hot mess … but it mostly worked.”
Farkus called Claude the holy grail to cracking the code on NetLink development. “There are only a small handful of online Saturn games,” he said, “but now the possibilities are endless.”
The two have added used their portable NetLink code to add functionality to several pre-existing homebrew games, including Disasteroids, Utenyaa, Micro Motor Mayhem and Flicky’s Flock. That’s thanks to the code being easy to transfer, Julian said.
“I have chunk uploading/downloading working so I can send sprites to the system or alternatively read the VDPs to mock what’s on the screen on my computer (that still needs work because of layering),” he said back in March.
Farkus said they plan on releasing the networking code and source code for Coup at some point so that others can use it as reference to build their own. He said they could “easily” set up another NetLink game with the code base they’ve built, too.
“I’m betting that we could point Claude at the network stack and have it make a tic-tac-toe game relatively quickly for example,” Farkus said. “It’s really up to the imagination.”
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