login server code

[LeftRoad]

I know this subject has been talked about before but with all the recent flak from Sony and 2 C&D orders, what comes next? If they did shut down the EMU I doubt Sony would come after all the thousands of little guys with their own servers that they didn't know about. I guess as long as the little guys had little servers and little followings, who would know?

What is the reason for not releasing the login server code? Is it the crypto? Is crypto necessary to run your server (because of mini-login I would think not)? Can we do without it and still have the crypto-less login server code?

I've seen old login server code out there but haven't seen it work with the newer files it includes. So that route is effectively closed unless someone creative figured it out. If the code for the server is out, and people are working on code for the client, why is the login code secret? That would seem to me to be the full triangle at that point. Change the content and voila, your own personalized MMORPG.

This isn't meant to anger any of the devs with an old question revisited but I know this is on more people's minds than my own. I just needed to find something to do at work besides working :)

[fanman55]

It would be great if the loginserver source code would be distributed (I could finally make my server fully private for friends and family...) but I think that if it was (handed out), people would know exactly how the public login server worked therefore be able to "hack" into it and do whatever. It kind of sucks that certain people have to wreck it all for the people who would use the source code for non malicious uses, but that

[LeftRoad]

I think I found the same code you're talking about but my knowledge of C is at about the 1st grade level ("yup, that's an IF statement"). The last major programming I ever did was in COBOL. I got the code to compile at least, but it still didn't work. Pouring over the code gave me a headache and I really don't know where to begin. I guess the first step is trying to understand the process (and learning C a whole bunch better than I currently do) and then take it from there.

There are too many bad apples out there destroying things for people. I didn't even think of the hacking aspect of the login server. That brings me back to the days of Diablo online and people with cheat programs going around killing people because they found it funny. It didn't take me long to quit that. Every online game I think I've tried has had that same "can't play it right and have fun so I'll cheat and ruin the game for everyone else" mentality. I doubt any company will ever be able to control/counter that.

[Damilis]

Every online game I think I've tried has had that same "can't play it right and have fun so I'll cheat and ruin the game for everyone else" mentality. I doubt any company will ever be able to control/counter that.

Include Electrodes with the game and make it manditory to wear them to play. That way if a GM finds a cheater, he can kill them. Little by little the cheating population will be eliminated. :) Of course a lot of innocent people will be killed by the GMs who "Can't GM right and have fun so I will cheat and kill someone" :)

[mwmdragon]

This has been a dream of mine for a long time. I could get a working login server than my friends and i wouldn't have to wait for a major holiday to play EQ where we can all gather to play EQEmu on the LAN. We would love to just log in togethere on the private server and play whenever but we need to rely on connections and uptime of the login server and problems with packets and such. Long story short, to play in a non lan group righ tnow is to much of a hastle for us, So we play WOWEmu instead. If EQEmu came out with a public server i KNow we would ditch WOWEmu and come back to the EQ world.

I have written a ton of quests for EQEmu but Now I am learning the WOWEmu quest scripting so my friends and I can benefit from the all the quest writing I do. If EQEmu had the loging server I would poor my time back into quests fro EQEmu..

Hope i didn't offend you developers but this is an old issue I think should be revisited.

[wize_one]

login server code will never be given out.. that has been covered 1000000000000 times before. for lan parties and such just use minilogin.. does the same thing just without the crypto, just have to manually add your friends to the db

[LeftRoad]

And that is why I don't play baseball.

[LeftRoad]

After seeing another post about someone wanting the login server code (that didn't search the boards first) I thought I'd bump this with a twist...

I have successfully connected an external user using minilogin over VPN (OpenVPN.net). Not sure how many can successfully connect this way but I did find some strange things by doing this.

1. If you have routers on both sides make sure you change your IP schema on the server side (to make life easier on others). You don't want both routers having 192.168.1.1, it won't work. Change the third octet to 192.168.2.1 or something.

2. Need to have a separate computer on the server LAN set up as a bridge server to host communications properly. I tried playing on the same machine I was using to bridge and it confused things. XP does bridging really easy. I have been trying to configure a Linux machine and have all the bridging setup but haven't had a chance to test it yet.

3. DSL, something they do causes my brother's connection to the server to drop (LD) after being in anywhere from immediately to about 20 min. Most of the time it dropped right away. I've had problems with users having DSL at home trying to connect with a mainframe app at work. As near as I could figure there was some inherent DSL firewall causing the problems, but only resolved it in one case. The user contacted their ISP and was given a shortcut workaround to allow them to connect. Still haven't confirmed or corrected this.

4. A second user had broadband (Road Runner, which we are on) and he connected fine. Played for over 2 hours with no issues. So that was 2 internal LAN users and one VPN client.

There is hope and this is a viable alternative to getting the minilogin code (which won't happen). The instructions for OpenVPN are pretty good but Linux took some serious digging before I was successful getting the thing running (still not tested though). Having the code would be easier but then everyone that knew about your server would try getting in. If you just want to play with a handful of friends around the world then a secure VPN will let them do that, then only they will be able to get in.

[castlusion]

We had set a VPN up it was when mini login had almost been banned itself ....
Any way we are planning on ussing VPN again to use the current minilogin im running debian and all connections will be done on server bo enless i get to much overhead... dought full but who knows ... i used 10.10 adresses for vpn as 192.168 are used for my network and some others had a small natting issues at one point but testing shows so far it is possible to connnect ... be warned VPN connections are pickier about there connection and may drop also the tunnel usses a little overhead ... and last some end users cant seem to get it together this could be a natting issue "NAT" look it up if some one just dosent be able to connect to the vpn at all.

[rojadruid]

3. DSL, something they do causes my brother's connection to the server to drop (LD) after being in anywhere from immediately to about 20 min. Most of the time it dropped right away. I've had problems with users having DSL at home trying to connect with a mainframe app at work. As near as I could figure there was some inherent DSL firewall causing the problems, but only resolved it in one case. The user contacted their ISP and was given a shortcut workaround to allow them to connect. Still haven't confirmed or corrected this.


DSL uploads are picky they have overhead to maintain bloc sync with the upstream head end.

the problem now adays with dsl's users computers is they like everyone else are infected with spyware/adware/malware whatever its being called, wich it taking up the dsl upload overhead.

[Jaezzy]

In lieu of login server code and in the interest of making vpn set up easier.

www.hamachi.cc

Very easy to set up.

Everyone gets their own IP address and joins a private network that you can set up and password protect. Your eqemu server must run hamachi and join the network too. Then you bring up hamachi, and point your eqhost.txt file to the hamachi ip address of your server.

Since everyone gets their own hamachi ip address, you can use mini login and each person has their own minilogin account with their hamachi ip as the minilogin ip.

It's encrypted, private, and fast. I've used it to connect to my eqemu server. Works very well.