FreakU/EQClient progress

[daeken_bb]

Well, we've been working quite continuously, and we've come up with http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/ as a way to facilitate development. I've been working on the UI backend of the client, and windows are now rendering properly.

Happy Hacking,
Lord Daeken M. BlackBlade
(Cody Brocious)

[daeken_bb]

All of the screenshots from the last post about FreakU/EQClient are now back up and operational.

[Enoex]

Wow, nice work man

[daeken_bb]

Thanks.

Just wanted to update everyone again... UI translucency and fading (e.g. gradually changing to opaque when you mouse over a window, and then fading back when you leave) is fully functional now. Now it's time to start on making movable windows >:)

[Windcatcher]

Any chance of posting binaries?

WC

[daeken_bb]

Am on the phone with a friend at the moment, but if you tell me what you need, i may be able to help you out. I don't use windows, so posting win32 binaries is currently out of the question. Other than that, i can probably help you :)

[Shadow-Wolf]

Well i tryed to compile it using devc++ but i just gave up after all the errors, Im getting ready to make a new email so i can get a trial server with vsnet but i heard someone got more errors on that then i did with devc++.

[Windcatcher]

(Shrug) a Linux binary would be fine. I have a laptop running Xandros where I could give it a try...

WC

[daeken_bb]

I run a custom glibc build, so a linux binary is (I think) out of the question, however, you should be able to build it no problem. Just pull down the latest tarball, untar it, run make, and then do ./freaku zonename

Make sure you have SDL, OpenGL, GLU, and the pthreads dev libs.

[Derision]

I hacked the files a bit to compile it with Visual Studio .NET 2003

My 'hacked' Win32 source and a compiled .EXE can be downloaded from here:

www.rama.demon.co.uk/freaku.zip

I didn't log all the changes I made, but from memory:

changed fopen modes from 'r' to 'rb'
removed all 'inline' declarations.
Added #include <windows.h> where required.
Fixed wld_name mallocs which were 1 byte too short, causing runtime errors when 'free'ing.
Download SDL from here: http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-devel-1.2.7-VC6.zip

win32 doesn't have getopt, so I hacked the command line parsing so you need to run it as

freaku <eqdir> <zone>

e.g. freaku c:\everquest hateplane



Some zones work, lots don't, qrg and hateplane are a couple that I got to work with this Win32 version.

[gxti]

Some calls to 'free' caused runtime errors so I just commented them out.

Are you kidding? The program probably already leaks more than a broken faucet, and you basically just told it to chew through the system's RAM like some kind of memory-chewing-thing. I have VC++ 6.x and don't mind taking the time to compile it properly, so expect a win32 binary soon.

[Derision]

Some calls to 'free' caused runtime errors so I just commented them out.

Are you kidding? The program probably already leaks more than a broken faucet, and you basically just told it to chew through the system's RAM like some kind of memory-chewing-thing. I have VC++ 6.x and don't mind taking the time to compile it properly, so expect a win32 binary soon.

Wow, I thought I was trying to be helpful by posting what I had got to work under Win32, last thing I expected was a flame ...

[Melwin2]

Less pejoratives or I will pig. Don't belittle your fellow coders.

[Windcatcher]

As a side note, don't worry too much on trying to render mob models for the client yet. I've been working on it for a couple of days and I'm making good progress. I can render most models well now (though still a few glitches, mostly with female models' shoes, for some weird reason) and I'm about to take a stab at animating. When I'm done I'll release a new version of DZoneConverter that can render them and I'll update the .WLD reference doc. DZoneConverter doesn't bother to load the textures (it never did) and the hard part is getting the polygons right anyway.

WC

[daeken_bb]

Whee, barefoot hippy elves! :)

It's great to hear that you're working on that, it's definitely appreciated :)

I've been working on the UI code and I have fully moveable and clickable windows at this point. It's coming along quite nice. Going to work on finishing some depth rendering issues, then work on adding widget support.

Happy Hacking,
Lord Daeken M. BlackBlade
(Cody W. Brocious)




P.S.

Screenshots!

http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-001.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-002.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-003.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-004.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-005.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-006.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-007.jpg

P.P.S

Fixed depth testing:
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-008.jpg

[Shadow-Wolf]

derision, i tryed your binaries and first i didn't have msvcr71d.dll then when i got the file the program doesn't run at all.....

[gxti]

Sorry, didn't mean to come off that angry, but the free() calls are kind of there for a purpose. And I got so overly infuriated with Windows after that attempt(the headers were screwing each other basically) that I gave up. It's been a few years since i did any win32 programming, and I've forgotten how bad it really is. Heil glibc. I do appreciate that we have some functionality on win32, but please find a way to get the free calls working instead of simply ignoring them.

[Windcatcher]

Update: Well, I've got mob animations working in my version of DZoneConverter. Now all I need to do is figure out the few glitches I get, but at this point I can correctly render the vast majority of mob models (like 90% or better).

WC

Edit: all glitches solved. The only thing I haven't figured out is the (0x36)Data9 area. It seems to do something with poly vertices, but I'm not sure what. At first glance it doesn't look that important since I have DZoneConverter animating mob models perfectly (maybe it has to do with mesh deformation or some sort of hinting?)

[daeken_bb]

Data9 is supposedly "skin" data. It's in the same form as the vertex texture data.

[daeken_bb]

Just got nested objects in the UI working perfectly :)

http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-009.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-010.jpg

[Melwin2]

Just got nested objects in the UI working perfectly :)

http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-009.jpg
http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com/gfaydark-010.jpg

On a completely unrelated note, your quotation is of Marla Singer, not of Tyler Durden~

[daeken_bb]

Damn, I gotta watch that again, I'm sure you're right :(

[Windcatcher]

It's been a couple of pretty quiet weeks and I haven't seen the #freaku channel on IRC so...how's the project going?

WC

[daeken_bb]

Nobody has really been working on it. I personally am a bit lost as to where to go, and I've been really busy with real life, so I've not had much time to focus on it. The project isn't dead by any means, just a bit stagnant at the moment.

[bloodgoth]

We're all in great anticipation ^_^

[sotonin]

god i want a new client =X damn sony

[killspree]

Hmm, the OOW expansion appears to be ushering in a new file type for EQ, looks like all of the zone files are compressed into a single file now, .eqg.

[sotonin]

<-- reminds self not to patch

[killspree]

I guess I should be a bit more clear - but yeah, don't patch. This is only for the beta atm, and it's only the OOW zones. Some of them are quite large though, it's pretty odd. One of the files is 24mb...seems like a lot for a zone. Maybe there's other stuff included in it as well.

[Windcatcher]

From their standpoint it makes sense. They have a vested interest in making sure people can't cheat (as well as rip their stuff) so this is probably a totally different file format that no one can open or read (or create). If I was SOE I'd start migrating all of the zone files over time to something like this to break all of the third-party tools (including OpenZone) but maybe that's just me being paranoid.

WC

[killspree]

Agreed. That's the first thing I thought when I noticed it.

[RangerDown]

Absolutely *not* a practical way to compress zone files. I'm on dialup, and I really don't want to download a 24 mb file each time they want to make a change to 1 of the 20 zones that are in that file.
Granted, the zones don't change often... though I don't see that as a good thing either. It means SOE just slaps the expansion zones down and 24 hours after the expansion's release they probably don't ever even visit them anymore.

[Derision]

I really don't want to download a 24 mb file each time they want to make a change to 1 of the 20 zones that are in that file.

Allegedly they now use 'differential' patching (2nd paragraph in this link):

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/support/tech_support/ts_new_patcher.jsp

which sounds like it only downloads the bits of the file that has changed.

[KhaN]

Absolutely *not* a practical way to compress zone files. I'm on dialup, and I really don't want to download a 24 mb file each time they want to make a change to 1 of the 20 zones that are in that file.

Launch google, search RTPach.
It is being used since a looooong time now with games patcher, like WC3, C&CG, like always, SOE is so last year ...

Bytes Patcher, new files system, whats the problem if EQEmu is still "up-to-date" ? Also i still think and maintain that EQEmu should have its own client, to take eqemu out of eqlive, because this is the only real solution, yes keeping EQEmu "up-to-date" is nice, but its bypassing the problem not resolving it~

Nice to hear Freaku isnt dead btw ;)

[daeken_bb]

1) I'll probably try reverse-engineering it sometime in the next week or so. Compressed file formats are simple in general.
2) The 24MB download would be a one-time thing. From there they'd simply update single files.

[daeken_bb]

Well, I'm back to work on FreakU finally. I just finished off the last of the _major_ changes to the UI code (they started with creating it in the first place ;) ) and now have:

Movable windows
Clickable buttons
And some other spiffy stuff that I probably forgot (first time I've touched the code in 2 or 3 weeks)

I'll put up a tarball on http://freaku.gforge.linuxpowered.com in a bit :)

[hypershadow66]

the website says: 195/254 Rendered properly (76.772%)
does that mean that its almost done and is the zones the only thing needed for freakU to be completed?[/quote]

[Cripp]

i am sure there is still LOTS to do after making zones render properly :D

[KhaN]

Glad to hear you are back at working on Freaku.

Im actually making new custom zones, and i will wonder how FreakU will handle this, well, what do you plan to add to freakU that will make the life of eqemu easier (zoneproxy implementation, possibility to read 3DS ?), i know its too early for those kind of questions, since freaku is pretty alpha, but im curious.

Im not a prog, more like a graphist, if you need any help, PM me, i will be glad to help on Freaku project.

[daeken_bb]

To answer hypershadow's question, we're so far from being 'almost done' that it's not even funny. Simply making all zones display properly is a fraction of all the work.

KhaN: We may make it possible in the future to read 3DS files, but we'd need some way of tying it all together because of the extra data that's in WLD files. If you have any ideas on this, let me know.

[Windcatcher]

One of the points of FreakU is that ZoneProxy won't be necessary since the client will load any zone you throw at it.

I doubt that loading .3DS files is a viable option since there they don't contain other important details, like a BSP tree or other very important information specific to WLD files. We know how to create WLD and S3D files for the most part, so I don't think it's a major problem. One thing I'd like to see is someone port OpenZone's S3D and WLD code to C++ so the EQEmu team can use it for handling line-of-sight calculations.

WC

[KhaN]

For me, if client is done, and if peoples like WC can decode WLD (to create weapons, models, all graphics), EQEmu will have the possiblity to take eqemu out of eq, read you will be able to create your own custom world, from scracth, without any eq contents.
Maybe im a dreamer, but i would love to see eqemu becoming a sort of opensource MMO, where peoples will be able to build their games with tools like OpenZone and the one Sandy is creating, well you got me.

3DS example, by thinking of it, i would prefer to see a MSH importer, like you build an object/items, and you can directly see in with FreakU, because render under 3D modeling tools and EQ Environnement are not the same. MSH-SCN file format WC done are great, im sure they would be a way to use them as a quick viewer for FreakU.

Now, this bring in my mind another question, if FreakU is DX9 based (like EQCLient), will it be possible to implements things that are not in EQ Client (Bump Mapping ?). I know those kind of question are wayyy to early compared to where FreakU developement is ... but .. im curious :/

[daeken_bb]

Thank you KhaN! I had the exact same idea. I want to be able to create a completely custom world :)

I also want to be able to _build_ worlds in FreakU, both offline and online. I want to make it a completely integrated development and design tool.

FreakU is OpenGL and SDL-based, btw. I don't use windows or any of MS's other proprietary bullshit.
Oh, and yes, bumpmapping can be implimented. I'd also really like to play with normal mapping, but both of those technologies will require building completely new content. Should be fun :)

[smogo]

**** **** !!!!!

/me reread al this to make sure this is not a dream or a joke

Yup, EqEMu would greatly improve from a free client, i want to throw in some help if i can

free means no-pay, but above all, means EQEMu players control over it.. OMGz, we need that. Let's stop trying to catch up with live. Create new worlds :)

**** **** !!!

got to re-read again :D

[smogo]

FYI, downloaded the tarball (0.2a), and compiled under both linux (slackware 9.1) and cygwin-gcc for windows.

Everything went perfect (one single warning in eqnetwork.c, lines 49 and 50, redefinition of a macro), though i could not build with the configure script.

Running (windows only) is ok on small zones, but larger ones are waaaaayyyy toooo sloooow. I'm not sure the GL libs i'm using are hardware accelerated though :(. Are you clipping the planes to LOS anyway ?

looking forward to hear from you, i'll browse through the code in the meanwhile.

'later

[daeken_bb]

Good to hear that it does in fact build with cygwin :)

We don't currently do any culling using the BSP tree, but we hope to do that soon.

[Cisyouc]

I'm a little confused on this issue. Is FreakU supposed to be an EQClient Clone, but same zones, spell effects, UI, etc?

I think that creating a client with just the same zones but different UI, spell effects and game essentials like that would basically take the eq out of eqemu.

[sotonin]

the purpose of freaku is to make a client that doesnt suck ass.

a xml type skin system would be nice. but well.... i could care less, i'd just like a client that doesnt crash on me and i dont have to worry about breaking my eqemu

[KhaN]

Is FreakU supposed to be an EQClient Clone
I really hope Freaku wont be an EQClient clone /poke Daeken.

I think that creating a client with just the same zones but different UI, spell effects and game essentials like that would basically take the eq out of eqemu.
You dont need freaku to "take eq out of eqemu", this is easily handable with actual eqclient. But yes, it will make things way easier, but all of this is already possible with actual eqclient.

I was thinking of it today, and i realised one thing, doing the graphic engine of Freaku will be a small part, because there are a TONS of others things in client that are hardcoded, and it will need to be recoded in freaku (which i find dumb), or integrated to eqemu code ...

[killspree]

Cisyouc, I think the major thing FreakU will offer above the EQClient is a truly custom world over what we can currently do now. There are many limitations due to client hardcoding that are a pain to bypass, if some are even possible at all. FreakU would(most likely) allow for fully custom zones with unique file names, instead of having to replace current zones with a new mesh, etc.

This probably takes the EQ out of EQEMu for you, and with good reason. However, I for one am definitely looking forward to it, because it provides a new level of customization for the "hardcore custom" servers which want to provide fresh new zones and content for their players to experience.

[smogo]

EQ is SOE's custom version of an EQEMu server :P

There's much chance however that the first working freakU client uses a lot of current game design and ui (not to say ... files). The easier the better imho.

[daeken_bb]

The initial versions of FreakU will use EQ's files until we replace them with our own. The goal is that we can eventually replace them completely, and document as we go so that people can replace them as they want.

[Cisyouc]

a xml type skin system would be nice. but well.... i could care less, i'd just like a client that doesnt crash on me and i dont have to worry about breaking my eqemuI didn't mean the skin system I just mean the skin appearance itself.

Eh, I dunno. Im on the fence about this whole thing, if we loose some of the essentials like the UI or the spell effects (just examples), we aren't Emulating EverQuest really. We're just using the zones such as Windcatcher allows us to import Quake 3 maps, lol.

[sotonin]

You stick with the sony client then, ill use the freaku. thx =)

[daeken_bb]

But the main thing is that we will have the UI and spell effects and such. We will have every feature from EQ with the possibility of adding more.

[eq_addict_08]

The best thing imo about Freak is that we could give it out.. No more "how do I get warez?" from newbs. If made properly, could use opcodes from any generation server, so would be universal..

[daeken_bb]

My hope is that we don't have to worry about various versions, simply because we can make our own variations on the EQ protocol as we see fit. But that's a while in the future...

[sotonin]

Incorrect. We could give out the basic client "framework" but we would still not be able to distibute any of the content. .s3d or anything like that. sony still owns them

[smogo]

hmm, there are now good tools for building custom zones :p

Go, go, daeken_bb !

[a_Guest03]

We can legally pass out WC's custom zones. If we have our own client and server, eqemu is then 99% OS, free as in speech, free as in beer, with maybe just the loginserver closed source.

They didn't patent .s3d file formats.

[sotonin]

No doubt. making a full featured MMORPG would very much be a possibility. But the bulk of the people who peruse these boards want Free EQ sadly. And it will not solve anything as far as passing out the copyrighted sony content =D

[jbb]

This is interesting.
Other than the few posts in this forum is there any information to be had anywhere about the file formats? I wouldn't mind having a play with them myself but don't want to have to reinvent everything.