EverQuest in Unity Engine project

[Ensane]

Hey guys,
I'm an experienced unity programmer and a old school fan of everquest (rallos zek/sullon zek)

I been reading about a few attempts to make a eq client... One guy building his own in C++ and another using unity...

What i want to do is see how much interest/support i could get and id be willing to lead this project and build a new client using Unity.

Why I think unity would be good as it will allow us to compile a client for Mac/Windows/Linux/Web/Android/IPhone how cool would that be? and we wouldnt have to spend alot of time writing a new engine and spend the time just building EverQuest to work with the already sophisticated emulator servers.

This will allow for alot of things, improved graphics options, a true classic theme, as well as improving the code all together to make EQ less hackable, and we can go custom route with it and make a new game based on eq only more modernized. Options are endless but, we all know the eq client now is holding things back.

Please feel free to reply here on your thoughts and message me on skype: bruinp8n

[rhyotte]

A couple of reasons I want to see this project take of:
- 1) *LINUX* !! ...did I mention LINUX? Sick of windows.
- 2) The client Chase / legality issue in obtaining / server-different-clients-issues are a pita. One client to wrestle with would make life on all sides so much easier.

I really hope this takes off.

[Ensane]

Well im all about developing/managing it, but, only if i can get additional support.

[Caryatis]

Its a pretty safe bet we will never have a non-Sony client, for quite a few reasons but really the only one that matters is the mountain of work is to accomplish something like that.

Also a problem is that nobody has extracted useable animation information from EQ models(or whatever killed Tyen's browser thing, I never really paid attention) and its just not feasible to reanimate every model in Everquest.

If you want to get momentum on this project, you can't wait for others. Start proving your concept and create a plan, its going to be very hard to convince the people with the skills to help unless they can see a way through. Don't worry about the easy stuff either, everybody knows you could reproduce the inventory or compass in Unity without issue but get a pipeline for extracting and importing assets or something like that and you might get something going.

[Ensane]

Yea I totally agree, however, before I can really commit myself to a new project I'd have to have a few good men to start with.

I been trying to contact both pixel & tyen... if i can get them both on-board then that should be enough motivation for me to get started.

[Tyen05]

Originally Posted by Caryatis

nobody has extracted useable animation information from EQ models(or whatever killed Tyen's browser thing, I never really paid attention) and its just not feasible to reanimate every model in Everquest.

Problem Solved

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36726

[Shin Noir]

I don't like being a naysayer, but I'm not sure it's worth the investment time is the largest challenge. It would definitely be a faster production to develop EQ with modern tools compared to development of original EQ, but it would need a lot of time and dedication between many experienced developers (who likely work full time engineering cool stuff for cool amounts of money) to get the ball really rolling.

But if you can make it happen, more power to you.

I think a smarter use of time is developing the PEQ/EQemu source, as it is in a very playable state with great contributions but always available for more development and refinement.

Imagine if we could do edits to the EQ client executable? Things like custom handshakes for network traffic, SSL encryption, improving range of valid numbers to display on client (beyond caps), etc.. the last I checked EQEMU intentionally avoids the client executable to try to stay as legal as possible, but even still, this is what I'd like to see to allow emu servers more capability.

[Ensane]

Something that could happen tho if we had our own client is we could eventually re-create our own game that captures the eq nostalgia... We got alot of the server end coding done for it with this project... Could improve it and end up with our own community built game in the end if we did get a client going.

[knowom]

Originally Posted by Ensane

Something that could happen tho if we had our own client is we could eventually re-create our own game that captures the eq nostalgia... We got alot of the server end coding done for it with this project... Could improve it and end up with our own community built game in the end if we did get a client going.

That's pretty much what every MMO company has done basically just they've kept it all closed source and proprietary.

[Tyen05]

Entire titanium assets will be up for download soonish.

Assets are ezpz to put into unity and we are mainly focusing on the initial connection between eqemu and unity

[rhyotte]

This is sounding very promising...!

[Tyen05]

Thanks bro.

[rhyotte]

I am going to install OpenSuse 13.1 tomorrow and kick the tires so to speak. Their Open Build Service looks very promising. Point being... this Unity // open client is something I would be only too happy to try to contribute to. I am not a coder, but I will see what I can do for packaging up OpenSuse 13.1 builds etc...

I would also be willing to put work into a User Interface basic "mod" if such a thing would be of interest.

One of the things about OpenSuse 13.1 that is of interest to me is that this will be supported for 3 years

Gary

[Tyen05]

Not sure what the correlation between Unity & OpenSuse is, but if you want to contribute jump into the source I provided on eqbrowser.com and mess around a bit.

Any work connecting Unity to Eqemu source is appreciated.


The GUI we will be using is a plugin called NGUI that I have yet to purchase.

I currently have eqbrowser on a crowdfunding platform so I can raise funds to purchase a few pieces of software/plugins.

[Shin Noir]

I own NGUI, but it goes against it's copyright to release it on an open source project...
If you close the source to only people you give permission to, I could contribute my copy of NGUI.