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[LethalEncounter]

Sorry if I'm a couple of weeks late, but I just noticed this thread. I believe that enforcing client upgrades is the simpliest of the problems you are facing. The way EQ2 does it, is that the client sends its version number to the login server before it logs in. If the version number is too old it cant login. You could do something similiar. Another thing you could do is just randomly change opcodes every patch to prevent old clients from working

Originally Posted by Windcatcher

The problem is cheating. If it's open source there's nothing stopping cheaters from going crazy, and believe me, now that I've written one I can see all kinds of ways that cheaters could take advantage. So as much as I would like to make it open source, I doubt that it can happen for the really important parts (though many parts CAN be open-sourced, such as the netcode, content loader, 3D engine, collision avoidance, etc.). By the way, SimpleClient uses the same engine as OpenZone, so if you downloaded OZ then you already have all the 3D engine and collision avoidance code...

One question that I need answered, and only the devs can do this for me, is how to enforce client upgrades. As we fix bugs, close exploits, etc. there needs to be a way that ensures that people upgrade. It's ironic that with our own client we find ourselves in the same position as SOE, but there you have it. So anyhow I need an answer to that before I/we release it.

Edit: Someone will definitely get the full source, if nothing else to ensure the longevity of the client. I have no idea who that will be, as I haven't thought about it, but that will have to be another dev discussion. Whoever gets it will definitely need to have Delphi 6 or 7 (the personal version would be just fine). It can also be ported to newer versions -- I once ported it to Delphi 2006 but I hated D2006 so much that I dropped it and went back to D6.