EQ Titanium Icon Files

[anubisrwml2]

I have a question regarding the use of Icon files beyond Titanium. I have been experimenting, and found that the EQ patcher for Titanium download and installs the EQ Icon files (as well as a number of other files). Zone files and such are not, however, installed. Apparently the patcher installs only files necessary to allow compatibility with SoF clients.

Since I paid for Titanium, and I am assuming we all have if we are using that client, would it not be safe to use the icons then? Since it is the icon files really that we want, and not the rest of the patch, I could trim just the icon files and make a small installer which would allow servers to run SoF icons, increasing the compatibility between the two.

Before I post the patcher, which works by the way as I have tested it, I wanted to make sure it wasn't violating some rule. I assumed, since I do have a legal copy of Titanium, that the use of the icons which are distributed to this client would be acceptable.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

[trevius]

Personally, I don't think it is a good idea to post any type of patcher or whatever if it actually contains client files in it. Some people have worked on patchers in the past that work on a per-server basis, but those would be for patching any custom files for each server as/when needed. That is a bit different from a patcher that actually just contains a static list of files. You might as well be distributing a zip file of client files at that point.

If you want to use SoF content, I would suggest getting the SoF client and having your players do the same.

Though, for compatibility purposes between the 2 clients, I have had an idea for a while now on how to make work-arounds for most of them. Basically, the idea would be to have a table that contains a few fields that can be set depending on what you want to convert. It would work by letting you choose Titanium alternatives to SoF Icons, Weapon Models, Races, etc. Then, when equipment packets or NPC packets are sent, it would just check if the icon, weapon model, or race was higher than Titanium's max value for that and if so, it would use the table to convert it to one compatible with Titanium.

[anubisrwml2]

I see - If it's a static list then we are distributing the files. But the question is, if the files are already publically available online through Sony for use with the Titanium client, would it really be breaking the rules? I could rewrite the patcher to pull the files from Sony instead, thereby not directly distributing the files myself but instead merely linking to files already hosted.

I really would like to see some sort of way to incorporate the files readily available, though I do like the idea of working on a work around - however for some quests - for example a collections quest - using substituted icons would be a bit difficult. Ill play with the idea on my server.

Thanks for the response Trevius - can always count on you.

[trevius]

Really, any icon or weapon model released later than Titanium could be swapped for one similar that exists in Titanium. If the icon on the item is a new bag icon, you would just have it swap it for an old bag icon. If the item was a new weapon icon, like a sword, you would just set it to swap that icon for a sword one in Titanium and so on. I am sure there are maybe a few miscellaneous icons and models that might not have very good matches between the clients, but I am sure something could be figured out to use in those cases as well.

For now, you can always just replace the icon in the items table if you want to use one newer than Titanium. I would be interested to see feedback from the rest of the dev team to see what they think of handling conversions like I mentioned.

As far as patching directly from SOE goes, I think that too is still a grey area at best. Yes, it is possible, and maybe more legal since they are already hosting the files openly for anyone to access. But, I think one of the big concerns is that we don't want to be associated with anything that might catch SOE's eye and have them put focus on stopping it.

If you want to use a patcher for your server, go for it, but you probably shouldn't post it (or links to/about it) here.