Quote:
Originally Posted by Shin Noir
Trevius, what kind of packet collectors have there been, and what kind of packet collector would you like to see? Also, packet collectors aren't working due to..?
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I think this thread should answer those questions:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20278
In short; We used to have some custom made packet collector tools that would allow us to collect stuff about NPC spawns, doors, objects, pathing, etc. Some work is being done to get them working again and they do just about everything we could need from them. Basically, they collect the packets and save them and then are able to convert that information to fill in the database automagically. It saves a huge amount of time for servers that might want content that emulates Live closely (like PEQ). It is also nice for custom servers, since it can give a nice base of NPCs in a zone to make less work depending on how much customization they are wanting to do. And for any type of server, having door, object, zone point information is almost essential when building a zone, so that is great stuff to have. It would also be good for collecting stuff like AA info and others.
The reason they don't work is because they have to be maintained regularly to stay compatible with Live after every patch and they fell behind at some point years ago. Since then, they have become completely useless and so far behind that it will take quite a bit of work to get them fully back up-to-speed again. First, we need them to be able to compile, which is the first big hurdle. After that, we will have to update all of the packet structures and Opcodes, and probably some database schema stuff to make them fully functional again. And even after that, we will have to make sure to keep them updated after each change so they don't fall too far behind. Hopefully, we can get them on the SVN so people can openly fix their issues instead of having them maintained by only a single person or something.