Thread: Release!
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Old 04-14-2008, 04:16 PM
Windcatcher
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,175
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I've received a PM about a (very old) readme in the distribution that mentions pointing an .INI variable at your "EQ" folder. Before everyone gets confused by this, let me nip this one in the bud with my response. I think I should say this publicly to make sure that we are ALL on the same page.

Quote:
Wow. That's pretty old. No, that isn't valid anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. The client today CANNOT read SOE files, though when I first started it I had it reading their file format at a basic level so I could test it with my zones (this was before the XWF/XWA file format was finalized). Once XWF was finalized and I had the proper loader code built, I removed all code that could read the SOE file format. In fact, I totally re-architected the loader code. I can say definitively that there is no code in the program that can load SOE files. Even if you pointed the ClientDir entry at any SOE zones the client wouldn't (and couldn't) read them. The new loader architecture is pretty flexible and the loaders are in DLL's: could someone, if he wished, write an SOE loader? Yes, but so could someone write a Doom 3 loader, Half-life loader, or any other kind of loader. SimpleClient only comes with an XWF loader. I hope this clarifies things.
So before anyone goes off the deep end, it should be clear: SimpleClient, as released, C-A-N-N-O-T read SOE files. You don't have a loader to do it. I'm well within my rights to give it a file-format-agnostic architecture, which is what it has. I began the client in late summer of 2003, long before our XWF file format was finalized, and I had to work with something, so it began life with some (*really* crappy) WLD loader code. That code is long gone (and good riddance!).
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