Openzone, Textures ingame problem

[Kroeg]

I loaded everything up with Minilogin (and accidently borked all my accounts in my db.. woops) and everything is the same... no change (incorrect/no textures and defaulted to eq textures).

Perhaps someone from SOE/Verant knew this ability was out (zone mesh building) and really didn't like it and somehow changed the way eq loads textures? heh, I have no idea.

[Windcatcher]

It can't be that, since it works perfectly for me, unless your client is different from mine. I'm in the process of setting up a server that doesn't use minilogin and I'll test it as soon as I figure out how to log in to it when it's locked.

WC

[Windcatcher]

I found at least something so far. My world/client.cpp file in the server is trying to connect to the wrong IP when it tries to initiate a connection with ZoneProxy. I'm working on it at the moment...

WC

P.S. Nevermind. I don't have my firewall set up properly for my EQEmu server yet...

[Windcatcher]

Okay, I finally got my server working (the problem was that I was trying to log in from within the LAN...so I put a hack into my server code for now that redirects my LAN router address to my global address). I'm logged in and my character is in zone "zone1" as I type this and it looks perfect. I also tried intfernal1 and that looked good too.

PM me if you want me to unlock the server so you can log in, since it's working at my end.

WC

[Lurker_005]

windcatcher:
Did you try to just edit your host file? For me I have an entry

192.168.0.101        lurker.gotdns.com

and that solves all internal lan connectin issues for me.

[Windcatcher]

I guess that would work if I signed up for one of those dyndns services. I didn't bother because I mostly use minilogin and don't need to go though the EQEmu login server all that often. Anyhow, I've tested my server a gazillion times and the textures come up perfect every time. I even put some spawns in the DB for one zone and changed the PoK book in Gfay by the Felwithe entrance to port me to windszone. Everything has been perfect for me.

I finally figured out how zonelines are encoded in .WLD files and I'm adding the ability to create them in OpenZone 3.1. It turns out that the destination zone ID, X, Y, Z, and heading values are hardcoded in the .WLD file (with all "9"'s meaning to ignore that value). This leads me to believe that the client must at some point send the server a packet telling it the destination zone ID and the exact coordinates to zone to (as well as the heading). I'm anxious to see what happens when I start exporting zones with zonelines already in them.

In the meantime, have you had any success with your server? If you want I can put my server up for a little while so you can log in to see if it works for you--I can meet you in windszone, for example, and you can get there by clicking the book in gfay.

WC

[Shadow-Wolf]

nice find on the zonelines wind but(the idiot in me is speaking) wouldn't you have to add alot of code to eqemu to make this work, or maybe have ZoneProxy intercept the packets and tell eqemu where to go(also needing extra code added to eqemu source)

[Windcatcher]

I would think the client is already sending the necessary packet...the zoneline information is in the .S3D files, and so the client would know when it's time to zone. I just finished getting OpenZone adding zonelines to zones and exporting them in the .S3D files, but so far there's no response in the client. I'm 100% certain I'm putting it in right, because I loaded the .WLD in DZoneConverter and the zoneline is there. It's possible that the client doesn't use this information anymore or EQEmu ignores the packets, but I figure the information's there for a reason. I'm going to do some more digging..
.
.
.
Well this is interesting. Some zones have the mechanism I described above, whereas other zones only specify a zone point ID, starting with 1 (no destination information at all). I'll switch my code to use the ID method and see if I can coax EQEmu to get the zone points working by putting corresponding entries in the DB...

WC

[Monrezz]

Wow, well done WC.

Seems you've found something very useful - if the zones have zonelines built in, and you manage to get the Emu to pickup the packets that get sent when you hit the hardcoded zoneline (if that's what happens) then you're going to make zoneline issues a thing of the past and remove a large section of the database.

Great work man, keep it up.

Monrezz

[Windcatcher]

Well I changed it so the zone information only has the zoneline ID and I have zoning somewhat working. I had to add entries in zone_points that corresponded to the zoneline ID and source and destination positions. It looks like there's an "old way" and a "new way": maybe they stopped using hardcoded zone lines in the .S3D files for extra security and flexibility.

There are two issues, though: in the process of getting zonelines in OpenZone I found that it wasn't putting zones together properly, and I intend to spend most of today trying to fix the problem. This *might* be part of the cause of Kroeg's problems. The other issue is that after I zone the server is dumping me in the wrong position. My guess is that it's not pulling the data correctly from zone_points, but I haven't delved too deeply into that yet.

WC

[Kroeg]

WC -- I'll assume a lack of follow up on my issue means it's all on my end and you have no idea what's going on?

[Windcatcher]

Still working on it. There was definitely a problem with exporting .S3D files, and I think I've got that nailed down now. I also have zone points somewhat working, the only problem being that I don't arrive at the destination coordinates I want. It's definitely possible that the .S3D files your version of OpenZone is creating are giving your client heartburn. Give me an hour or two to look at this destination point thing and polish the GUI portion of my OpenZone, and I'll see if I can get a new version up sometime today.

WC

[Kroeg]

Definitely don't rush I was only curious if I actually stumpped you, or the problem resided on my end. I'm trying to also set up a network farm at home for a school final grade project, so I haven't really been messing with it too much. Thanks for following up as much as you have.

[Mongrel]

Just wanted to mention this:

Great work, Windcatcher :!:

I will probably not use OpenZone that much (never gonna set up a public server myself), but you did a great job of coding and researching.

Regarding the hardcoded zonelines:
You're probably right about the security issues. If zonelines were client side, people could easily "port" whereever they want. I'm surprised no one figured this out a few years ago, hehe.

Can you try and find out when they stopped using the "old way"? (If you have the time, of course, since there's no real reason to do it other than curiousity)

[Windcatcher]

All I know for sure is sometime after November, 2001. My Arena zone still has the old way and that's when it was made...

WC