I've got hanging flags working now (flapping in the breeze), and Lelembeth is fully usable now (has merchants, guards, lots of things to kill, a couple of guildmasters, etc.). I've also fixed some serious bugs and the client is basically ready for a release/public beta. The major question at this point is: where to put the first public/test server? Cavedude has been hosting a private one for small beta testing, but a public one will have to be readily accessible 24/7. Also, while my test db is usable, some zones are still mostly empty and you could explore everything in pretty short order (though Lelembeth has enough content for quite a bit of leveling, with the highest-level mob, excluding guards, at level 20).
Is the client still buggy? You betcha--I would consider this more of a public beta than a public release, but I feel pretty good about letting it loose on the public -- but we need a server that the community can access, and the correct loginserver host/port (paging Doodman...).
At this time, SimpleClient supports the following server versions:
EQEMU 0.5.5
EQEMU 0.5.6
EQEMU 0.5.7
EQEMU 0.5.7-DR6
EQEMU 0.5.8
EQEMU 0.6.0-DR2
I'm currently testing on my box with 0.5.5, but when I release everything I plan to upload a 0.6.0-DR2 DB as that server has lots of fixes (for example, 0.5.5 has a nasty tendency to forget your inventory items).
There WILL be updates to the client as we move forward into 2008 (for instance, at this time the only existing player models are (1) male human, (2) male wood elf, (3) male dark elf, (4) female wood elf. Anything not modeled shows up as the default human male, and as time allows I'll add more types). There WILL be bugfixes, most likely driven by player feedback. But today I can say that I consider it playable.
Oh, and about those hanging flags: I had to make a TINY change to the client, but the gist of it is that the flag is simply exported as a mob model for that zone, with a single skeletal animation "P01". Placing it is done in the DB using the "objects" table. All in all it was surprisingly easy. I don't believe that the live client can do this, but it's easy when you're writing your own client
