Dev's Response

[Itchybottom]

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

I'm very certain that EQ server-side code isn't small-scale anything, and given how many times Live Devs used to admit that things weren't built to be scalable, I have no doubt that it's chock-full of spaghetti/patchwork code and an absolute mess to sift through.

Have a look yourself, it's not that large. It's certainly nothing like live [the server], aside from the fact that the server expects and sends opcodes from a closed source client, that was once from live. The only real pain with EQEMU is often the database work and discovering differences between client versions packet wise (opcodes -- even these aren't that difficult to decipher) I realize that p99 is running quite a bit of customized source code, but it's still not all that different, it's just different where it counts for classics sake.

Even the database has direct parallels with ProjectEQ (or Angelox's, which is based on ProjectEQ), you can literally use Maudigan's database PHP search tool to find out the spawn points on mobs, with respawn time in a lot of cases. It's definitely altered, but it's not unique. One great thing is NRO and the beetles not being all grouped together on a hill.

I love what they've done for the most part, but the community here seems oblivious to common sense. This whole "I'm taking my ball and going home" attitude from a few people, is not something that I generally see very often in open-source. Not since Image, devn00b and old EQEMU, anyway. It's just as bad as the users, to be honest. Saying that you could have left it closed until you were spawned until Velious is childish; the project would likely die without players to test it. Even still, with a small test group... People would go their separate ways after a year I guarantee it. Life can change a lot, when a hobby is sapping time from loved ones or life changes such as more hours at work happens. A lot of things in the database are left unaltered (mainly drops related to content that isn't in -- regeant pouches in Najena for example), for the 12 months of work the database had from... 12 people? I've talked to players in game that seem to think that the server was either stolen from Sony (and hence referencing ZAM for anything, about how the spawns work) or written from the ground up by Project1999. There would be even more bugs and buffer overflow issues with the server if that were the case.

Lets all just take a step back, appreciate the contributions from the devs, and community, and focus on the prize. Pre-Luclin adventure that might exceed even EQClassic's charter.