Custom Zones...?

[Windcatcher]

Actually, one final note on file formats -- SC is file format agnostic. The zone-loading code is in a DLL. Want to load another format? Write a DLL for it. There is no reason for me to keep the DLL interface closed; there are probably much better formats out there than .XWF and no reason why SC shouldn't be able to use them. Eventually I want to add hardware shader support, for instance, and XWF might not be the best vehicle for it -- Quake 3 format might be better, for instance. If you decide to load Sony's files, IT'S ON YOU. I'm not going to provide the means, but I don't have to go out of my way to make it absolutely impossible, either.

[Richardo]

I'm still waiting for people to give me plans to make new zones for this client. *evil snarl*

[Shadow-Wolf]

Ok heres one question for you, since the client relys on EQEmu for now does that mean that EQ plays and SC players could players on the same server so long they had the same zones?

[Windcatcher]

Technically, yes, but it's the "same zones" part that's the problem. The only way I can see it happening without using ZoneProxy is if you replaced SOE zones with your own and then exported the same zones as .xwf, with the same zone names. The problem is that you'd be using Sony's zone names. I can't stop you from doing that (and I have neither the desire nor the legal requirement to attempt to), but I'd advise against it.

[link2009]

Originally Posted by Windcatcher

Technically, yes, but it's the "same zones" part that's the problem. The only way I can see it happening without using ZoneProxy is if you replaced SOE zones with your own and then exported the same zones as .xwf, with the same zone names. The problem is that you'd be using Sony's zone names. I can't stop you from doing that (and I have neither the desire nor the legal requirement to attempt to), but I'd advise against it.

So, in the end this is a license problem but theoretically, we could write our custom-coded .DLLs to load Sony's zones.

[Windcatcher]

Originally Posted by link2009

So, in the end this is a license problem but theoretically, we could write our custom-coded .DLLs to load Sony's zones.

Or Half-life, or Quake 3, or anything else that has a BSP tree. SC can't do everything that a Quake 3 zone calls for, but it can do enough. The reason for the DLL abstraction layer is because I don't want it tied to any particular format, even XWF. Every file format becomes obsolete eventually. The choice of using an abstraction layer really has nothing to do with Sony at all -- I simply consider it good design.

[link2009]

Originally Posted by Windcatcher

Or Half-life, or Quake 3, or anything else that has a BSP tree. SC can't do everything that a Quake 3 zone calls for, but it can do enough. The reason for the DLL abstraction layer is because I don't want it tied to any particular format, even XWF. Every file format becomes obsolete eventually. The choice of using an abstraction layer really has nothing to do with Sony at all -- I simply consider it good design.

Excellent idea. Time for me to catch up on my BSP Trees reading .