A few questions about newer servers:

ChaosSlayerZ · #1 05-26-2009, 01:32 PM

well peq has absolutly no data for SoF you will be able to load into drakin strating city but it will be totaly empty

Snoopdog · #2 05-26-2009, 01:34 PM

Well even if I cannot start out as a Drakkin, I am sure the new client has many reasons to switch over to it.

**trevius** · #3 05-26-2009, 05:14 PM

Over half of the SoF zones do have .map files, so they are definitely just as usable as Titanium zones. All zones are completely empty, so if you want to use them, you would have to create everything in them from scratch, including doors and zone lines (which are a bit of a pain).

I added a new rule a while back that will let you chose a separate zone for SoF clients to start in when they create a character. If you don't set that rule, then they will just start in the same place that you have all Titanium clients starting in, or they will start in Crescent Reach by default if you don't have the variable set for startzone.

Drakkin are fully functional and in the latest releases, they even save all of the appearance stuff you set when you create them. I have them set to start in Crescent Reach, on Storm Haven, but you could start them where ever you like.

provocating · #4 05-26-2009, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trevius

Over half of the SoF zones do have .map files, so they are definitely just as usable as Titanium zones. All zones are completely empty, so if you want to use them, you would have to create everything in them from scratch, including doors and zone lines (which are a bit of a pain).

I added a new rule a while back that will let you chose a separate zone for SoF clients to start in when they create a character. If you don't set that rule, then they will just start in the same place that you have all Titanium clients starting in, or they will start in Crescent Reach by default if you don't have the variable set for startzone.

Drakkin are fully functional and in the latest releases, they even save all of the appearance stuff you set when you create them. I have them set to start in Crescent Reach, on Storm Haven, but you could start them where ever you like.

Well unfortunately I have not played EQ live since LDoN so I have no idea of the Drakkin other than what I have read. That is the cool thing about EQ was the diversity of the races and classes, the more the merrier if you ask me. Crescent Reach was the starting city for the Drakkin on live anyway right ? In PEQ I do not remember Crescent Reach being spawned or was it ?

**trevius** · #5 05-26-2009, 05:28 PM

No, nothing in SoF is spawned in the PEQ DB and it will probably remain that way for a long time. The only thing that would help get PEQ up to date on SoF would be for someone to get the packet collectors working. I am willing to help get them working, but the only part I can really handle is the structure and opcodes part. The rest of it would probably have to be done by people more familiar with that code. Though, I have considered looking into how hard it might be to just have the SEQ code do the parses for us. I know it already does the basics of what we would need it to do. The only extra thing we would need would be the ability for it to update directly into a table, and to be able to parse out every important field for all packets. I almost think it would be easier to do that, than to try to get those old collector tools working. I am pretty sure that SEQ would be willing to add changes to their source to allow us to use it for this if we wrote the code for it. It would be a mutually beneficial project, because we would be assisting in making sure that their structures and opcodes were as accurate as possible and they would be assisting by doing the same. So, the work to stay caught up with Live would be split up a bit between the 2 projects. I wouldn't even be too surprised if they would give someone from here access to their SVN if we could build up a relationship with them. I have spoken with a few of their devs and they all seem pretty nice and helpful. (Getting a bit off-topic here, sorry)

I know that myself as well as many other admins would be extremely happy to see the packet collectors working again. PEQ can use that information to cut down their zone populating time by a huge amount, I am sure. And even custom servers that don't want to use the spawns still need stuff like doors, zone lines, objects, etc. Hopefully at some point we can actually get something together that will let us do those collects again.

provocating · #6 05-26-2009, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trevius

I know that myself as well as many other admins would be extremely happy to see the packet collectors working again. PEQ can use that information to cut down their zone populating time by a huge amount, I am sure. And even custom servers that don't want to use the spawns still need stuff like doors, zone lines, objects, etc. Hopefully at some point we can actually get something together that will let us do those collects again.

So what I am understanding, between all of there expansions the opcodes changed and broke the eqemu packet collector. Who originally wrote the packet collector ?

**trevius** · #7 05-26-2009, 07:15 PM

I think FNW wrote it, or most of it and he isn't around much anymore.

Opcodes are part of the problem, but only a small part of it. Opcodes are probably the easiest thing for us to fix. A bigger part of the problem is making sure the packet structures are all correct, but many of the structures we have been working on for SoF will work directly with EQLive as well. The biggest problem right now is that no one can even get the source code for these tools to even compile correctly. If we can't compile it, then there is no use working on the other parts of the problem with them. I honestly have no clue what it would take to get these compiling properly. Obviously the compile must have worked at some point for these tools to have worked in the past. Cavedude is still in contact with FNW from time to time, and he mentioned that it might be possible for FNW to take a look at it sometime. I am sure FNW is a busy guy and since he isn't directly involved in the project anymore, it is probably hard for him to be motivated to do the amount of work it would take to get these tools functioning for us again. That is a really huge favor to ask of him.

I think part of the problem is that they were created to be compiled on an older version of VS Pro, which is not the free version and is not cheap. It would either need to be changed to work with modern VS Express, or maybe just any standard Linux compile. Or, at worst, it would have to at least work with a current version of VS Pro, which is currently does not.