Open suggestion to ALL, absolutely ALL persons who run EMU servers

[sunbeam]

Why in God's name do you not take advantage of the EMU launcher?

Look I know you guys put in work, and a lot of it, to customize these servers.

But this irks me. I can't see that it would be very difficult to include your differing files with the launcher folks. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I imagine it takes no more than a minute or two.

But no, apparently that can't be done.

Instead I have to make a separate copy of my game for EVERY server whose operator has custom files, and who has elected not to take advantage of this feature.

Right now I think I am going to try a different server. DungeonCrawl is apparently where I am going, because they support this feature.

I'd like to try Soulfire, but this is another custom server. And you guessed it I have to make yet another copy and install his files.

Just getting real old.

Everyone needs to face facts. Virtually none of these servers is going to have a high population, or in most cases more than 10 or 20 players on at any time. You need to do everything you can to make it easy for people to try it for the first time.

And that is just the way the world rolls, I'm sorry to tell you.

This may seem like it is a very trivial thing for the end user to do. But that is just the way the world rolls people. In most cases we are going to log on to your server, run around for a bit, and decide it is not our cup of tea.

But if you want that log on in the first place, you need to make it so that I don't have to have yet another copy of EQ on my drive. Maybe my pc is slow, but it takes a couple of minutes to finish copying those files everytime.

So I'm taking a stand. Soulfire? I logged on and saw your "Dougs" following dark elves around. And that is as far as it is going for me. Pity, you must have something going on, since you have a reasonable number of people playing for an EMU.

But if you had just put your 3 custom files up with the EMU launcher folks...

[provocating]

/shrug

I keep things vanilla.

[Xarekis]

Your post strikes me as far too whiny, regardless of the validity of it.


"Just getting real old," "I'm taking a stand". Communication skills will get you far in life.

[provocating]

It's really just hard drive space, drives are cheap. I keep multiple client directories anyway, it just makes things simple. I have one for Titanium, UF, ROF and SoF just for testing purposes. Multiple links on the desktop, etc.

[Mariomario]

I personally just keep a zipped folder of the server with its custom files in the archive, then just extract as needed. I keep one folder with all the original defaults as well. 1 client folder with approximately 12 different server folders and their custom files. /shrug easy enough to click Copy and replace

[Nydosa]

As the owner of SoulFire, I'll kindly take your post as a feature request. No one has previously requested it, therefore I've overlooked it.

Also, it may be helpful to post a suggestion to have it added to the Server Setup guide as I bet you that's where most of us get our information.

All you had to do was ask!

[sunbeam]

Your post strikes me as far too whiny, regardless of the validity of it.


"Just getting real old," "I'm taking a stand". Communication skills will get you far in life.

Whiny?

Gee, I think of it more like I am a Thunder God. And I point my finger (wanna guess which one?) at you, and say "Burn." And you do.

Sadly the Internet doesn't work that way. But it should.

Now that is a communicated emotion, based on your response to my post.

Okay, pissing contest aside, exactly why do all these EMUs not avail themselves of this? Seems like it would be easier to have a place to put the files, so they don't have to arrange a place to download them. If they change something, which frequently happens it is easier to propagate the changes.

So what am I missing?

Whining and all, why aren't they using this?

Plus inevitably someone has messed up models or missing zones due to the client they are using, or which versions of the zones the dev is using.

If you use the EMU launcher all that goes away, and you don't hear what is wrong with Nektulos/Lavastorm/Toxxulia over and over?

[lerxst2112]

Go search for all the posts complaining that the launcher was broken and people couldn't play.

It may be better now, but the memory of when it wasn't is still there.

[Davood]

i do what i learned from modding NWN
never deviate from the vanilla client unless you are going to play with your friends only

all of my "customization" is server side. I have been able to implement some very magical things.

here are some hints for other server devs, mainly targeting the custom spell file fetishists.

if your code base for your server is somewhat recent then:
(this is all possible in lua too im assuming)
*you can listen to player text passively and have perl react (# commands!)
*you can use any perl module you like, and interact with it from eq (database or web enabled options...)
*you can (perl) watch spells being cast, and hijack the end result of those spells (stop making custom spells files you lazy bums) including result text etc .. not only that but you can do things with the spells that you cant with the spells file.
*items can have hidden augment slots - and you can manipulate what is in those slots via quest
*most people are too lazy to download your custom files no matter how hard you try and remind them. alot of people barely managed to get eqemu going (as a client) and are scared to tinker with their files (from conversations with players)

[Akkadius]

Go search for all the posts complaining that the launcher was broken and people couldn't play.

It may be better now, but the memory of when it wasn't is still there.

The server serving the content was suffering DOS from the same person DOSing the P1999 project.

The reliability only varied because of that issue.

[jerluwoo22]

Why on earth would you keep making new eq folders when all you have to do is copy/paste a few files within a single install folder. This is what I do. First make a new folder in the eq directory called backup. Inside this folder create another folder called vanilla,original,etc. Copy dbstr_us.txt, spells_us.txt, spells_en.txt and the resources folder into vanilla,original,etc. folder that you created. Now inside the backup folder you created, create sub folders for the servers you play on and copy their custom files into them. Now all you have to do is copy paste a couple files to switch servers. My god makeing 7 gig folders every time want to switch servers is madness.

[sunbeam]

Why on earth would you keep making new eq folders when all you have to do is copy/paste a few files within a single install folder. This is what I do. First make a new folder in the eq directory called backup. Inside this folder create another folder called vanilla,original,etc. Copy dbstr_us.txt, spells_us.txt, spells_en.txt and the resources folder into vanilla,original,etc. folder that you created. Now inside the backup folder you created, create sub folders for the servers you play on and copy their custom files into them. Now all you have to do is copy paste a couple files to switch servers. My god makeing 7 gig folders every time want to switch servers is madness.

There are more files than that potentially. Zone files, global load, etc.

The ones you mentioned are very common. But depending on the server, your approach will not work properly, or may mess up another server.

I guess you could find every file that anyone has ever customized, or that uses different eras (Nektulos, Toxx, Commonlands, Freeport, etc).

Probably you could id about 20 or so files, and make sure you have the right ones for each server.

But I'd rather just use the launcher.

[Tabasco]

My server is set up for the launcher and I know at least a handful of players use it, but it doesn't always have the most up to date files.
I've made the feature request before, but I'll re-iterate it: Let us point to externally hosted files. At that point maintenance would be effortless after the initial setup.

As for doing everything server side, we're already limited quite a bit by the client and certain effects have to be shared in order for things to sync and display properly. It can be daunting for someone to manage all the files they might need, but that's really why the launcher is such a good idea.

I've never personally been bothered by having to manage my own files but if we can make the process easier, why not?

[drakelord]

Honestly, I was developing a custom server launcher ages ago, and it was eventually scrapped because of legality issues involved with distributing files related to the servers. Whether or not it is legal or not, that might be part of what is holding people back from using such things.

[Rumzuck]

Hey there,

there is one reason i have not implemented external files yet, and that is the filesizes are in the filelist-xml, and that is used to calculate the total size to download and everything.. if i find a good solution for this, ill add external hosting :)
i will also add clustering and akkadius will help hosting the biggest mirror, so DDoS is never a problem again =)

[wolfwalkereci]

Screw the launcher. Shit can go die in a fire.

onbeforeunload = function() {};

[Akkadius]

Screw the launcher. Shit can go die in a fire.

onbeforeunload = function() {};

That is a profound statement, looks like you really sat and thought that one through. Care to elaborate a bit more?

[trevius]

The launcher is not managed by the EQEmu team and not hosted by Rogean along with the EQEmu Login Server.

I don't have a problem with the launcher's code not being managed by the EQEmu team, as long as someone who is at least somewhat active has access to its source if/when needed (which is currently the case).

I do have a problem with the launcher not being hosted on the same hosting as the login server. It has been affected by DDOS attacks and probably other issues many times over the past couple of years. Every time that happens there are multiple threads where people are complaining that they can't log into EQEmu. EQEmu is still up, but they only know how to use the launcher, so they think that it is down. Each time, someone has to reply to tell them to try to log in without the launcher.

If they were on the same hosting, then when 1 is down, the other would be as well, so downtime would at least match up. Until then, it is just an added headache for support from these forums IMO. We can't support the launcher from these forums because we have no control of its status. The idea of the launcher is great, but it can cause a lot of confusion when the hosting is down for it. There does seem to be less downtime on it lately (at least based on less posts about it).