Classic server

[Dr Zauis]

Well..Im a total noob at this so I may be talking crap but so far in the few months Ive known about emu I have heard many questions concerning this.
Yes I would be interested in playing Old style as I only started playing EQ this year. I bet its much better than now.
But I think I read somewhere that even the original was patched from the start so maybe what you think of as classic may not be so classic..In fact it be buggy.
But heres a suggestion..I also read that to find info on the old style will be hard as alakazaam has updated all info..But maybe the site hase been recorded like on google. Or somewhere else..
At any rate I hope its possible and I hope somone could do it. Its gonna have to be the guys that played way back then doing it..They are the only ones who really know what it was like..

[fanman55]

Where does one start when making an Emulator that is based off of an old client? any tips would be helpful as to where I should start out. Thank you for your continued support, I'm very greatful =).

[Dr Zauis]

OH..I forgot to mention..I dont know much about games that comunicate over the internet but I think it works this way from what I have gathered so far. The client communicates with the server through a series of packets.
These packets are filled with opcodes. A packet sniffer must be able to record these opcodes and maybe some other pertinent information so that a DEV knows what the opcodes mean.
Now I read that there was no packet sniffer back then so there are no records for the opcodes. So I think those will have to be figured out by hand or some other way. Im thinking maybe alot of them are still the same but no experience whatsoever on that.(These statements may not even be true.)

As for the login server. I think there are what is called offsets. And I think every time there is an update that breaks the EMU these offsets are changed. Maybe if nothing is created in a few years from now I might have enough knowledge to try it myself. Cough!
But I know so very little it stinks right now. I dont know any C++ programming but I do know a little bit of Delphi. Not enough to be able to use
it for more than modifying someone elses programs so far.

[Aydun]

Greetings,

BTW, the link above for the original EQ loading screen , isn't the real one . You can find the real original / kunark / velious ones actually on verants website.. They're missized but you can easily resize them to crystal clarity and use them for your loadscreen / menu screen! IT's very sweet .

Thanks for that awesome (if not speculative) info on the jist of how the emulator works. Someone above posted that, you use old spell files to retain the old spell graphics. Fanman, tried this and said he crashed after fiddling with it a bit. Has anyone successfully replaced all of the modern spell graphics with the old ones? Also.. does anyone know if the expansions enabled were set back to classic or even kunark, would the spells still work from the newer eras? or would one have to go into spells_us.txt and delete the entries for the newer spells, or just not spawn them in game ?

Kindest Regards,

[Dr Zauis]

Well..If you are talking about me I dont think I gave much of an explanation!
One is going to need at least a thousand fold more info to even get started!
Anyway..If I were to try it I would probably find it easier to just scrap the original .exe and just use the files. Maybe in a few to 5 or 10 years I may know a little something. LOL..

[solid11]

I placed a link on here before for a classic theme pack that I put together but I think the files got deleted on the host server. Here it is again. I had to seperate them because of the limit of the upload. Just DL both for full pack. The readme file is in the rar file.

EDIT: Added link for classic UI also

http://saturn.walagata.com/w/solid11/ClassicEQ.rar

http://saturn.walagata.com/w/solid11/eqtheme.mp3

http://saturn.walagata.com/w/solid111/Classic_UI.rar