A few questions about newer servers:

[Zodl]

Hello all,

I am one of the users who has not been paying attention to current events on these forums, and is confused with some of the new changes I'm finding, and could use some clarification. Eventually I corrupted my old server, deleted it an re-installed a new build.

I am seeing that the Emu community is starting to support SoF (Secrets of Faydwer?) instead of Titanium. My friends and I play on a LAN, and only want the "Classic" content to Luclin, but we would be interested in new icons/weapons/shields included in SoF, as we make custom content. If we switched clients, would we need to download a special server, or just a current server build to use the SoF icons and such?

The other question I have is concerning the gm functions included on the server. For some reason my #repop force is not working. All other GM commands do work, and #repop force is recognized

[KLS]

The current svn build will support both clients at once.

[trevius]

EQEmu currently supports both Titanium and SoF. Just because SoF is under development does not mean that we will stop supporting Titanium any time soon, or ever. If you want to use the newer weapon models and icons, then yes, the only way to do that is by using the SoF client. Well, it could be done other ways, but it is not a simple change. All current builds of the source should have SoF enabled by default. You can still chose to disable new races (drakkin, froglok, vah shir, iksar) by changing the expansion field in your variables table to match the expansions you want to allow on the server.

The #repop command should work fine for you. As long as #repop works, the #repop force option should work. Normal #repop just repops all of the mobs that don't currently have a respawn timer set on them. When you use #repop force, it clears the respawn timers and repops everything in the zone. As long as your account status is set high enough to use it, it should work just fine. Max admin status is 250. If you are still having issues with it, maybe you can describe exactly what the problem is.

[Zodl]

Whoops, my post got cut short there, maybe I didn't select it all from word when I copied it. It was supposed to read:

All other GM commands do work, and #repop force is recognized, that is I still receive the familiar: Zone depop: Force resetting spawn timers. Zone depoped. Repoping now. Message, but mobs that have been previously killed do not respawn on a new timer. Is this a known issue with a newer build, do I probably have a server side problem or has this command been depreciated and replaced? Any help would be appreciated, as one of the nicest things about the Emu is #repop force cuts camping time back tenfold. (I’m not sure what my build number is, but the most current update is 5/16/09 in the change log, I’ve done a recent reinstall, grabbing quests/items as well, currently using older map files from August ’08, but I may update them soon)

So it sounds like it's most likely a server side problem, on my machine, (working in the current version and not depreciated). I'm getting a new PC in a few months, so it's not critical that I get this working right now, I'll be re-installing onto a new box soon.

Thanks for your time and fast responses

[provocating]

Not trying to thread hijack, but why create a new thread on the same topic.

Since we can now use SoF clients and I guess we can start Drakkin races correct ?

If so then where do they start out at ? I thought the new city was incomplete and the surrounding zones incomplete since PEQ is only finished up to PoP.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

SoF only suported on selected servers and those servers start them out wherever they start everyone else =) (in most cases) - i know Sh has an actual Drakin city turned on

SoF zones are non playable atm since there are no map files for them

[provocating]

The server is mine and is just plain vanilla PEQ from SVN.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

well peq has absolutly no data for SoF you will be able to load into drakin strating city but it will be totaly empty

[Snoopdog]

Well even if I cannot start out as a Drakkin, I am sure the new client has many reasons to switch over to it.

[trevius]

Over half of the SoF zones do have .map files, so they are definitely just as usable as Titanium zones. All zones are completely empty, so if you want to use them, you would have to create everything in them from scratch, including doors and zone lines (which are a bit of a pain).

I added a new rule a while back that will let you chose a separate zone for SoF clients to start in when they create a character. If you don't set that rule, then they will just start in the same place that you have all Titanium clients starting in, or they will start in Crescent Reach by default if you don't have the variable set for startzone.

Drakkin are fully functional and in the latest releases, they even save all of the appearance stuff you set when you create them. I have them set to start in Crescent Reach, on Storm Haven, but you could start them where ever you like.

[provocating]

Over half of the SoF zones do have .map files, so they are definitely just as usable as Titanium zones. All zones are completely empty, so if you want to use them, you would have to create everything in them from scratch, including doors and zone lines (which are a bit of a pain).

I added a new rule a while back that will let you chose a separate zone for SoF clients to start in when they create a character. If you don't set that rule, then they will just start in the same place that you have all Titanium clients starting in, or they will start in Crescent Reach by default if you don't have the variable set for startzone.

Drakkin are fully functional and in the latest releases, they even save all of the appearance stuff you set when you create them. I have them set to start in Crescent Reach, on Storm Haven, but you could start them where ever you like.

Well unfortunately I have not played EQ live since LDoN so I have no idea of the Drakkin other than what I have read. That is the cool thing about EQ was the diversity of the races and classes, the more the merrier if you ask me. Crescent Reach was the starting city for the Drakkin on live anyway right ? In PEQ I do not remember Crescent Reach being spawned or was it ?

[trevius]

No, nothing in SoF is spawned in the PEQ DB and it will probably remain that way for a long time. The only thing that would help get PEQ up to date on SoF would be for someone to get the packet collectors working. I am willing to help get them working, but the only part I can really handle is the structure and opcodes part. The rest of it would probably have to be done by people more familiar with that code. Though, I have considered looking into how hard it might be to just have the SEQ code do the parses for us. I know it already does the basics of what we would need it to do. The only extra thing we would need would be the ability for it to update directly into a table, and to be able to parse out every important field for all packets. I almost think it would be easier to do that, than to try to get those old collector tools working. I am pretty sure that SEQ would be willing to add changes to their source to allow us to use it for this if we wrote the code for it. It would be a mutually beneficial project, because we would be assisting in making sure that their structures and opcodes were as accurate as possible and they would be assisting by doing the same. So, the work to stay caught up with Live would be split up a bit between the 2 projects. I wouldn't even be too surprised if they would give someone from here access to their SVN if we could build up a relationship with them. I have spoken with a few of their devs and they all seem pretty nice and helpful. (Getting a bit off-topic here, sorry)

I know that myself as well as many other admins would be extremely happy to see the packet collectors working again. PEQ can use that information to cut down their zone populating time by a huge amount, I am sure. And even custom servers that don't want to use the spawns still need stuff like doors, zone lines, objects, etc. Hopefully at some point we can actually get something together that will let us do those collects again.

[provocating]

I know that myself as well as many other admins would be extremely happy to see the packet collectors working again. PEQ can use that information to cut down their zone populating time by a huge amount, I am sure. And even custom servers that don't want to use the spawns still need stuff like doors, zone lines, objects, etc. Hopefully at some point we can actually get something together that will let us do those collects again.

So what I am understanding, between all of there expansions the opcodes changed and broke the eqemu packet collector. Who originally wrote the packet collector ?

[trevius]

I think FNW wrote it, or most of it and he isn't around much anymore.

Opcodes are part of the problem, but only a small part of it. Opcodes are probably the easiest thing for us to fix. A bigger part of the problem is making sure the packet structures are all correct, but many of the structures we have been working on for SoF will work directly with EQLive as well. The biggest problem right now is that no one can even get the source code for these tools to even compile correctly. If we can't compile it, then there is no use working on the other parts of the problem with them. I honestly have no clue what it would take to get these compiling properly. Obviously the compile must have worked at some point for these tools to have worked in the past. Cavedude is still in contact with FNW from time to time, and he mentioned that it might be possible for FNW to take a look at it sometime. I am sure FNW is a busy guy and since he isn't directly involved in the project anymore, it is probably hard for him to be motivated to do the amount of work it would take to get these tools functioning for us again. That is a really huge favor to ask of him.

I think part of the problem is that they were created to be compiled on an older version of VS Pro, which is not the free version and is not cheap. It would either need to be changed to work with modern VS Express, or maybe just any standard Linux compile. Or, at worst, it would have to at least work with a current version of VS Pro, which is currently does not.

[Sylaei]

Just a quick FYI. I have Visual Studio 2003, 2005, and 2008. Also Visual Basic 6, but i assume that the packet collector was written in c/c++. I also have Visual C++ 1.5 if I remember correctly. If any of this helps in any way let me know, I'd be willing to attempt to get it to compile on any version I have if need be.

[provocating]

Can I have a link to the source ?

[trevius]

The link to where they are on SVN is in this thread:

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20278

It is an older thread, but the newer posts in it discuss a bit more detail on the situation and how to get the last source releases.