Luclin models smooshed?

[kaev]

Originally Posted by Zeonick [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I see what you're saying, but he is right. There was no offical announcement about luclin models not being allowed anymore. From what I gather they just stopped working as there is a check in place. Has there been any official announcement that I've missed?

You could try reading the p99 EULA that comes up when you start the client now. They explicitly disallow modifying the client, you can have account perma-banned for it. It just might not be worth the risk.

Hard to be more official than that, I think. Not all players read forums, all players launch the game to play.

[Zaela]

Originally Posted by Sage Truthbearer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The development staff made it a point to put in a check that requires Luclin models are disabled in order for you to play their server — and your patcher is deliberately circumventing that.

You can agree with it or disagree, but let's not pretend that it's unclear.

Didn't they already do that a while back? Might have been before my time. That's why people had to use globalload as a workaround in the first place. Locking the globalload file to the one they provided moves the goalposts a bit, but not very much. Just makes things a little less convenient. Obviously they'd rather people didn't use them, judging from past statements about the intended spirit of the server and all that, but on the whole it's not clear that using luclin models is explicitly worse than it was for the past however many months/years since they were originally "disabled". I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that someone might find that situation somewhat ambiguous.


But I'm bored and can't stand sitting on little bits of potentially useful informations, so I'm gonna give it away: they could make luclin models essentially not worth the bother simply by editing the globalload file slightly.

In each line of the globalload file, there is a block of four boolean-ish fields, each given as "T" or "F". No idea what each one controls, but it appears that the fourth field must be "T" in order for player race animations to be loaded correctly from the file indicated on that line. If the last field is "F", any luclin models loaded from that file will be stuck in the ragdoll position and won't animate at all. A world where all the players are gliding around as unblinking wannabe scarecrows is probably not something anyone would be willing to put up with for long.

As it happens, in the provided globalload file there are only two such lines. One is for the LoY (ish?) player froglok race (globalpcfroglok_chr.s3d). It seems unlikely that this race would actually appear in game, maybe bar some GM fun. Other than that, it's only there to show up on the char creation screen. Could probably remove this file from globalload entirely, or just change the last boolean to "F" to disable its animations.

The second one is even less necessary. globalske_chr2.s3d only contains some animation data for skeletons... luclin skeletons, it would seem. Classic skeletons work fine without this, could be tossed without a second thought.

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

My understanding--I could be mistaken--was that P99 uses Titanium simply because that's what Eq-Emulator used. I believe this project originally started out as a faster alternative to EQC and immediate availability was more important than adherence to all classic features--many of which were patched in later on. EQC seems to have been run by perfectionists. Since EQC still isn't finished and likely never will be it's safe to say P99's more pragmatic approach was also the correct one. Suits me fine. I've no love for the Velious UI.

Danth

Originally Posted by dnatabar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sounds about right, i would imagine that the data between the client and the server have changed A LOT from the trilogy era to how ever many expansions Titanium came with.
Using the base server from EQEmu was definitely a lot faster than starting from scratch, and a wise move.

Startup time investment and the availability (at the time) of the target client probably would have been the biggest factors, yeah. My understanding is that the trilogy-ish client used a different networking protocol than all the later clients do, which probably been a factor since the later protocol would have been better understood, since it hasn't changed that much in a long time.

There's also the related problem of packet profiling. A lot of communications/packet types are sent by the server to the client but not the other way around, or are initiated by the server and will never be sent by the client unless the server prompts them first. For a lot of reasons it's hard to guess at what packets might have existed, what size they would have been, what information might have been in them, etc, which makes it hard to just throw random packets at the client until something sticks. To get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, you'd have to have some examples of packets sent by the server -- as many different ones as possible, hopefully with some notes of what happened in game when a certain packet was received, and hopefully with some variations to tease out what all the fields in each packet are. Which would have required people to go around sniffing packets and collecting them when the target client was new -- very new, since (eventually) they would randomize things somewhat each patch in a (not too effectively) attempt to make things hard for people working on macroquest and such. (Never been involved in any of this stuff myself, a bunch of people from the eqemu community could probably explain this better and more accurately!)

The tl;dr of that being that the older the client is, the less information there is about different packets it uses and the harder it is to make use of the client's various features -- or even just have the server interact with the client enough to make the game playable at all.

There was an old server I used to be involved with (it's still around, barely) that started up around 2004 and used an ancient (awful) version of the eqemu codebase and a client that was somewhere just before GoD. It has a few more classic points than (uninjected/modified) Titanium, like still using the old, more pixelated and harder to read name tag font, no new water graphics and slightly older skies, complete support for classic spell particles, classic-style merchant windows that would be more friendly to classic-style UIs, etc... but it's hampered by at least two things: a lot of features are missing or incomplete due to lack of information about its packets, and it's nigh impossible to obtain at this point. It's definitely a balancing act; gotta work with what's available if you want to get anywhere.

[darchangel89]

Thats why its easier to just switch to P2002, instead of dealing with the nazi amish ppl here

[darchangel89]

Originally Posted by dnatabar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm all for people using the luclin models if they want, but shouldn't you be banned for making and supplying a way to circumvent the rules?
Rules are rules, even if they are stupid to some degree.

Shouldnt the people who were using the luclin models as an exploit be banned for using the exploit? They were allowed to cheat, and the rest of us got punished for their cheating.

[Itap]

You guys are unreal

[Rickson]

Originally Posted by Itap [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You guys are unreal

Agreed. Also, you are going to piss off the staff even more than you already have.

[Bristlebaner]

Ban inc I would say .

[Lorian]

P99 = Classic models
P2002 = Luclin models

If you like Luclin models and tolerate up to 3-boxing and PoK books then P2002 (Al'Kabor) is for you.

[Rararboker]

Not using the original UI = / = modifying the client.

You guys sure are desperate to make this okay. Though if you read the EULA.....

[Lady Julae]

Originally Posted by Rararboker [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not using the original UI = / = modifying the client.

You guys sure are desperate to make this okay. Though if you read the EULA.....

How is not using the original UI not modifying the client? Custom UI's were Luclin Era.

Serious, you guys sure are desperate to not make this okay.