Community News and Challenges

[Akkadius]

Today, this news posting is going to be about our community. Some of us have been here for a long time and we go in autopilot mode with the comfort of the perception built around this community. What we need to take in is how incredible how this community really is an how amazing it has been as a platform to express ourselves in so many ways as players and developers brought together by the same passion that has brought so many people together, EverQuest.

EQEmu Suggestions
If you have a suggestion on how to make this community better, whether it be access to links or more information, please provide suggestions in response to this post. We can take the feedback into consideration to make the community a better place to express our passions.

Forum Etiquette and Respect
We can't have the same people responding to others posts all the time about needing help. For those who do respond to those in need of help, it is very much appreciated and you are using your abilities and knowledge to help others who are trying to also express themselves in their endeavors, not everyone is technically inclined, I know my first handful of posts were seemingly stupid to those who knew more than me 7 years ago, pay it forward.

Forum Rank Ups

Congratulations to demonstarr55 for Developer status, he has helped PEQ and the general EQEmu source development over the past few years behind the scenes.

Congratulations to KinglyKrab for his Form Guide status, he has been very helpful answering to all of the people who have had forum questions and any odds and ends over the past years, this is what we want in our community.

If you feel you want a forum rank up, prove yourself and
pay it forward.

Server Discussions
Please check out this page for upcoming server projects, new developments or news regarding existing servers - http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=601

World Server Registrations
I can now take requests to do these, please send me a PM with your server in question and I can look at getting it registered manually.

Zaela has been working on some amazing 3D modeling work with skills that haven't been seen around here in a while:

• Model Importer - http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38287
• EQG Zone Importer - http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38384

Uleat still continuing to work on a necessary Inventory overhaul for further client support and code structure cleanliness.

Addmoreice Worked recently on revamping our database code to be less redundant and far more clean. Working with Akkadius and the coders crew to bring the player profile out of the BLOB and into database tables: http://wiki.eqemulator.org/p?BLOB_conversion

Shin Noir Added a thorough Linux Server setup guide here: http://wiki.eqemulator.org/p?EQEmu_o...n_7_Virtualbox

KLS working on all kinds of things like usual, including a recently deployed Maps v2 engine for EQEmu that had original work facilitated by Derision. Working on websockets and managing overall code structure with the EQEmu source.

Kayen working on all kinds of things as well, has just about implemented every last Spell effect type and listed complete and thorough documentation on this here: http://wiki.eqemulator.org/p?SpellEffects

I am probably missing so many things at this point, but the point is to bring all of the things happening in the background to the forefront.

QueryServ (Enhanced Server Logging and Metrics)
For things such as player events, will be getting some love, check out the project page: http://wiki.eqemulator.org/p?Queryse...tlist&frm=Main


EOC 2.0 - EQEmu Operations Center 2.0

EOC, has had an exponential amount of use over the past year or so and has warranted a complete revamp and overhaul of all new absolutely amazing tools. EOC is getting a complete UI revamp, as well as a framework revamp and we'll be introducing a plethora of new tools along with additional help from the community to make it even more available, easier to use and have far more tools to use. More to come on this, there's not enough real estate in this post to put everything that's coming here.

Here are some teasers:

Splose

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PEQ Mac Project

History:

This project started in or around 2010 as a PEQ project where developers from PEQ would log on the OSX server known as Al'Kabor, using a ppc client to record pathing, quests, and the likes for the zones that did not exist on the PC version of Everquest. In the spring of 2012, SOE announced the closures of many of their games including The Al'Kabor Server and Everquest Online Adventure. A hacked PC Client was used by other developers in EQEmu community and it was unknown by the players at that time. It was quickly leaked to the public assuming the server would be shutting down for good. At that time, a couple of PEQ developers along with a couple of others in the eqemu community wanted to find ways to preserve the server as it is since it was the only unique "Classic" server. The Server sunset was postponed due to players plea to keep it alive for another year before it shut down for good. It also gave us a chance to develop tools to collect and to find a proper codebase which then became a PEQMac Project. We decided to make it a project apart from the PEQ project to avoid confusion. So we decided to call it The Al`Kabor Project since it is more universal with using a pc client as well as the mac client.

Goals:

Our goal is to make it as close as it was on the official Al`Kabor Server with bug fixes as well that never made it to the Al'Kabor server. With the eqmac community help and all, we believe that goal can be achieved.

The Al`Kabor Project Team.

The Team:

Main Dev Team:

• Cavedude - Lead Code Dev
• Robregen - Lead Content Dev / Code Dev / Server Admin / GM
• Speedz - Code Dev / Content Dev / Server Admin / Senior GM
• Secrets - Code Dev / GM

Additional Support:

• Jikasoz - Quests / Testing / Hosting
• Khirsa - Testing / Quests
• Torven - Testing / Quests / Database
• Exellence - GM
• stairs - Code Dev / Lead Launcher Dev
• Darco - Graphic Designer

Outside credits go to:

• EqEmulator devs one and all.
• As well as KLS for helping us in tricky spots and working on current codebase for emu that we merge with.
• Akkadius for allowing us use of the wiki for dev tracking.
• demonstar55 for additional code and script help.

The Al`Kabor team did mention they are looking for help if anyone is interested!

[demonstar55]

The stuff Zaela is working on is super cool!

[knowom]

Originally Posted by demonstar55

The stuff Zaela is working on is super cool!

Exactly I'm particularly enthusiastic about zone importer it's very close to the tool I've been dreaming about ever since I got my hands wet with zone texture modification if not a little more grand actually.

It's basically the perfect solution to a problem that was difficult to work around how to make custom game graphics for EQ w/o copyright getting in the way of sharing them. This extends to beyond just zone importer, but pretty much all of the tools Zaela's been working on.

I know that Zaela wasn't thrilled or excited about the prospects of a tool for zone customization initially doesn't mince words like I said earlier haha, but I think the gentle nudge by Akkadius helped somewhat reluctantly change that view point for the better and benefit of all of us. Zaela may still not be overly fond of it in all honesty, but if that's the case hopefully we can do things to slowly change that.

I think Zaela may be a little uncertain on the scope of usage it's receiving and will receive moving forward perhaps which I don't think will be immediate, but will gradually over time take place and hopefully add up upon itself. Some of us myself included aren't knowledgeable programmers, but could make much more use of these tools than we probably would or could in coding related stuff. This is a positive thing for the community in that sense and gives us new and exciting stuff as well that will be and feel different which we can look forward to. Rome wasn't built in a day.

I still can't wait to see the new changes to Akkadius/Trevius EoC project when they are released. A few snippets details have been leaked dropped released on what's being worked on by Akkadius and it's very promising and in conjunction with Zaela's custom graphics tool set the future looks bright.

[Packet]

It's good to see everything going in a positive direction. Good job everyone.

[knowom]

Just a lot more open sharing and helping of each other within the community would go a long ways I feel. It's not really a one person en devour it has to be more of a collective effort if we really want the community to thrive it's best.

It's sort of like recycling where one person doing a lot of it doesn't do a ton in the grand scheme of things, but a lot of people a little bit can add up to a whole lot more comparatively.

One thing that could be good for a lot of small servers is twist on the progression server concept where players could lock/unlock zone content on that type of server it's generally just unlocked. Most servers seem to have a small user base size is the reality only so many players to go around. To some extent they may some hardware restrictions in terms of bandwidth and/or system memory as well on top of that or contributing to it.
This might be a way to help improve a bit of the social/grouping problem with having a small player base by bringing it closer together.

A nice thing to employ for servers would be a way to unlock and lock different zones like a circle of life cycle of zone access. A detailed wiki guide for how this could be done would be really handy as well. You could take 50-100 zones that always readily accessible zones and reduce it down to 10-20 or 25-50 zones at a time that are accessible zones out of 50-100 zones in total or whatever your ideal target numbers would end up being. These could be enabled or disabled by the players by some kind of action on whatever case by case situation the wiki could have a few different methods probably via a quest and/or raid encounter. Instead of having a limited amount of players spread across a lot zones you could reduce the amount of zones they are spread across which should help bring the community closer together and should help aid in benefiting social interaction a little bit which could help the longevity of servers in turn.

Also I'd just like to say special thanks to KinglyKrab he's always been very helpful in my experience. I don't always fully understand his answers sorry, but even though I'm plenty creative thinking up stuff to develop I'm a bit of a noob on the coding side I'm not a programmer so it doesn't come too easily for me though I don't mind at least trying my hand at trouble shooting and figuring stuff out. He generally provides them and I trust that they are pretty accurate he seems very knowledgeable and helpful. I don't think I've ever had him or seen him come across rude, arrogant, or belittling of myself or others he is one of the most standup people on these forums in that regard and duly appreciated.

Zaela's tools are duly invaluable to the community in terms of customization and very appreciated. Zaela doesn't mince words lol, but that's all right if there is a development tool or idea that Zaela finds appealing enough in it tends to get explored or developed so kudos to that.

Uleat I've only spoken with maybe once or twice, but seemed nice and can't wait to see how the inventory thing comes out who knows maybe that bring about wearable container items? Not sure if that's been determined unfeasible or not, but I know we spoke about it awhile back.

Akkadius obviously you've helped in a abundance of instrumentals ways to this community across the board from the website and wiki to EoC and hosting along with probably a variety of other stuff I haven't thought of as well.

There are others as well have been helpful, supportive, or contributed in different ways too, but I'd rather not drag this out so in summary thanks to any of you who have been. I'm really stoked about Zone Importer and the coming changes and improvements to EoC among other things. It kind of raises my enthusiasm for the future it looks very promising. I'm starting to get back into using and learning Blender. I'm treating it as my personal 3D modeling sandbox sort of like "Akkadius's Playground" for my blender designs if you will.

It's messy atm, but hoping to piece together enough designs to create some usable zones/objects ect in time similar to what Packet is doing currently and what Sakrateri has done in the past. I'm pretty certain had Sakrateri had access to what Packet does now his designs could have been quite a bit improved, but I love some of the 3D model designs themselves he created though textures look a lot more aged and models maybe a bit less detailed since overall system performance has increased greatly. On top of that 3D modeling tools have developed and improved a fair amount as well.

[vithmiris]

I'd like to thank all the folks that have made EQEmu possible, both past and present.

While I'm relatively new to being a server admin, I've learned a TON from you guys.

Cheers!

[knowom]

Akkadius a forum section a bit like "Development: Custom Code", but something like "Development: Custom Graphic Mods" which could have stuff like Zaela's various tools and Open Zone lumped into it's own area could be a good forum improvement.

It could have it's own sub forum sections dedicated to specific aspests tools, 3D modeling, textures, particle effects, and whatever else I may have forgotten. Each of which could also contain a player submitted custom content forum content sub section as well.

I just feel this could be beneficial by clumping and clustering all of these intertwined area's of interest together in the same area with a bit better organizational structure. Perhaps it will in turn help boost a little interest in them as well which obviously would be a good thing especially as this area of development may be more straight forward and easy for some of us interested in game development aren't particularly knowledgeable programmers.

[provocating]

Akkadius, sent you a PM about my server.

[Zaela_S]

Hnn?

I'd have listed my stuff last, personally.

[knowom]

I don't think Akkadius was trying to rank or prioritize them in any particular order probably just how they popped into his head at the time when he made that particular post.

[Zaela_S]

Regardless!

[knowom]

Out of curiosity anyone know if there's been any progress on getting Froglok Monks and Wood.Elf Beastlords working? https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/i...fering.208729/

Drakken is unavailable with Titanium though Froglok is which would enable 3 sided factions that are balanced with 1 of every class per faction side.

[NatedogEZ]

You can make any race into any class on a custom server

The animations for Froglok monk actually seem to work just fine.. unless Im crazy.. but they do have most of them

Froglok even have all the bard animations if you want to make them bards!

Side note.. flying kick on Froglok looks badass! :p

[vsab]

I think one major improvement would be sweeping up old/redundant stickies and archiving them (still available in search but not your first go-to point). I think when I started I spent a massive amount of time trawling through pages of ancient posts to see what tools/info were current.

Although it is slightly moot for me at this point due to RL circumstances, a kind of ranked and moderated dev to-do list would be good - perhaps resurrect http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=26884 and make it current, or start a new one. We also have the issues list on github, but it's used only by devs and not necessarily user driven, so I wonder if users could vote on features?

Whoever moderates/vets them could then add the issues into github and devs (or wannabe devs) can say "I will work on this" and discuss on github as well as IRC.

[Akkadius]

I'll work on putting together our current hit list. We're currently not looking for too much extra work at this point but I will make another update here soon.

Thanks everyone for their posts.