EQClassic's Source Code

[Yeahlight@EQC]

It is based on the EQTrilogy 2001 stock distribution

[Dibalamin]

Sorry this happened to you guys. Getting screwed over like this is never cool.

[trevius]

Yeahlight,

Sorry to hear about the drama with some of your devs who decided to steal work that they had not contributed much into at all.

I haven't looked at your source yet, but it sounds like it wouldn't be hard to use the opcodes and structure you have identified and add them to the EQEmu source to allow your client to run with the current EQEmu source. If so, maybe by combining the work of you and your team with the EQEmu open source project, it can work out to your benefit.

Personally, I see little reason to have multiple closed source projects all based on an open source one, especially when the community isn't very large to begin with. Some have split off in the past to push a very customized world, such as SoD, but even they are considering rejoining the open source project, at least to an extent. By being able to combine the work of multiple separate projects/teams, I think it will be a better over-all experience for everyone from Server Admin/Devs to Players.

Probably one of the bigger problems I see with closed source projects is that sometimes a ton of work/fixes/improvements can be put into the closed source that is based on our Open Source code, and for no specific reason, the closed source project comes to a halt or just never gets completed. And, by the time the source is released (if ever), both the Open Source code and the closed source have deviated so much that it would be a ton of work to attempt a proper code merge.

The EQEmu Open Source project might not be open to every single custom code submission or idea that people come up with, but I do think we can be pretty flexible as long as it something that multiple servers could make use of and isn't impacting to any current setups. I am pretty sure that much of the work you have done on EQC would be things that could probably been added directly into the EQEmu source to improve the emu for your client and in some cases probably all clients.

I know that submitting code through the forums isn't the most fun or efficient way to do it, but I also think that the EQEmu team keeps a close eye on people who do submit code and if they meet the right criteria, they can be added to the team to have direct SVN access to make it much easier to do updates. Then, as long as the updates are good and not breaking other clients or causing crashes (at least not too often), we are pretty flexible about what can be added.

BTW, I saw a video of those bolt spells you got working on Youtube and they looked quite amazing. Nice work!

[Sakrateri]

There is a bonus to working strictly alone.

Never trust anyone except yourself.


I have learned to do everything totally solo , once its completely finished then it will be released to all to do with what they will.

[Harakiri23]

Offtopic:
Since this thread is already here, i think its a good idea to show my (our) gratitude to the former and still existing developers of eqemu, you have done an amazing job so far (my favorites are the hacking of the water/lava files from s3d zone files and the perl quest system - although you got quite a mess with this one atm eh, refactoring ftw), without your work, eqc development couldnt possibly advance this steady and fast as it is currently

Ontopic:

Originally Posted by trevius

Personally, I see little reason to have multiple closed source projects all based on an open source one, especially when the community isn't very large to begin with.

you actually gave the reason yourself why it is in the best interest of all that there is NO open source - the community isnt large - there is no point opening dozens servers - this is the fate eqemu currently has - dozens of servers with maybe a 100-200 players at once (still doesnt get close to SoD community - why? its closed source). also i wouldnt worry about a second closed eqc project, to be blunt one of the "returning" developers hasnt added anything at all ever to the project except useless comments and empty class files, the basic knowledge of programming did not exist.

also some people say, open source will attract more developers - this is wrong actually for this kind of project, there were multiple chances to join eqc so far - its not like opening the source will attract more now - people think "hey i may have 1-2 hours and im curious maybe i can add something" - this actually doesnt work in a project of this scale, setting up your dev envirenment and grasping the basics of the code takes far more then 2 hours.

finally, security is an even bigger issue now - with the opcodes and packet structs identified it gets very easy for the average hacker to get programs like showeq running

what this all means is, that we will have to add an additional layer of encryption right before the first release (more work client and server side), i did not think we have to worry about this now because there arent that many people who would try to sniff the packets - but now its all open, there is virtually no work needed to write any hacks

A final note about using opcodes from the triology - given the current state of the eqemu - i find it doubtful that you will find a good way to integrate this old client into the base code. You will have to realize that our structs are alot smaller then yours, there is no augmentation, no aa, the player profile is alot smaller - disciplines are not spells, spells work totally different now etc - the opcodes wont help you - you would have to virtually modify each function which sents outs the structs - even more - the whole inventory handling, there is no shared bank, no guild bank etc... the only thing that now works with "live" data are the item tables because i found a way to map the new item data to the old item structs (we no longer need the binary blob tables).