What's the deal with this scene

I was catching up on stuff, was reading that PServer history document that Infamous & Haydz worked on, i noticed Infamous really disliking the binary leak.

Now I've had nothing to do with this binary shit, couldn't care less, but i don't see how it's killed the scene. I see it as more like everyone else is just not stepping up their game.

Why is there not one private server that has matched the content of Binaries? or stability? these days computing power is at a level where even shit code should be able to get at least 500 players playing stable.

All it takes is for one server source to match the content & stability of these Binary servers, to ultimately become better due to being open source & a lot more flexible.

Is there even 1 client version where the community have figured out & documented the entire protocol? because if so, all it takes is a programmer to setup a nice server core with an event driven plugin based framework and have others just contribute to content.

I can't talk, as i did a server a few years back but the job of adding all this content is simply too much for 1 person, by the time they get through half of it they have had enough.

If you ask me, get a few skilled programmers around here to work out the best way to structure a server framework then get other amateur programmers around to chip in with content via plugins, have an api documented and it shouldn't be too hard from there?

i mean really, what is an open source server right now that has the most features? years ago it was LOTF (with extremely bad code), has it even moved since then?

I believe the standard today is using p4n's source(s). While I agree with the fact of what you said, a well coded server will prosper, it was far more motivating to see people flock to your server immediately and heavily encouraged you to develop more. If you look up the proof of concept threads posted over the last while, you'll find some cool stuff, but they've been inactive as of lately, I haven't had time to talk with any of them so I can't give details.

Actually Hybrid the standard is the trinity base which now has turned into a worse pile of shit than LOTF.

It killed the private server development scene because all of a sudden there was no need to develop anything. If you were a new person coming into this scene, the prospect of learning C# and writing your own source/modifying an existing is infinitely more daunting than downloading something and pressing the GO button.

As a result of this, the need to make your source stand out dramatically from the crowd of binary servers became increasingly more important making the vast majority of development go underground rather than openly sharing development and ideas. Which has resulted in activity reducing in the scene to how it is today.

In the past development was fairly open, new sources and features we're released weekly, even daily for a time. Now a new source is released, perhaps every 6 months, even less? And these are just sources that the core developers have abandoned in favour of upgrades or leaving the scene. The rest are just rebranded old sources that barely function.

Attempts to develop open source projects have failed and will continue to fail because the mentality of the members here is such that if effort is required they fall into 2 categories, 1st category - core members have their own projects, don't really see the point in committing to others which is fair enough, and 2nd category - cannot be bothered would rather download something which is 'finished' than learn.

That's the state of things and the reasons why binaries helped destroy the development scene.

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Originally Posted by Korvacs Attempts to develop open source projects have failed and will continue to fail because the mentality of the members here is such that if effort is required they fall into 2 categories, 1st category - core members have their own projects, don't really see the point in committing to others which is fair enough, and 2nd category - cannot be bothered would rather download something which is 'finished' than learn. .

Make it 3 categories, (I fall in this one) willing to learn but get too tired of school and work that the person can't bother learning in the free time that he/she has and is interested in doing something else.

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Originally Posted by turk55 Make it 3 categories, (I fall in this one) willing to learn but get too tired of school and work that the person can't bother learning in the free time that he/she has and is interested in doing something else.

So your willing to learn but cant be bothered is what your saying? If you put other things first then seems to be like you cant be bothered to prioritise learning over other things.

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Originally Posted by Korvacs So your willing to learn but cant be bothered is what your saying? If you put other things first then seems to be like you cant be bothered to prioritise learning over other things.

Atm, Yeap :D

Just as Ching and Inf are saying, one person to do it all is too much of an task (if you were to complete match TQ binaries and beyond), and most people have their own projects, CO or not.

One thing (that has been tried before, but failed for unknown reason) is to gather many core members, divide them into groups of tasks, set up a SVN and go from there.

One group of people that handle the core functionality
One group that works on features (quests, npcs etc, easy but time-consuming)
One group that works on the web dev (the standard needs to go up)
One group that works with the graphic design (banners/posters, loginscreen, custom shit etc)
One group (or open for all?) for testing as it goes

Keep the project open as in report progress to the public etc, as it would build up excitement and acknowledgement for the server, so it's well populated when it's ready to be launched.


If all is done correctly and very organized, it would be smooth as silk and done in no time.

I am willing to work with others to achieve something nice. all we essentially need is a vanilla server engine with a decent plugin implementation for handling everything from packets to disk IO.

and as much as i dislike saying this, the server should be written in C# simply because of the amount of devs around here familiar with it.

Project should be on github not svn.

Project framework should be written with balanced parallelism in mind (a forkjoin implementation for example), not just a static amount of threads handling different areas.

There should be a large amount of criticism on all parts of the server from people that have a higher expertise in specific areas and can provide a valid argument for their criticism, to ultimately achieve the best setup.

I believe we should be using whatever client version has the most protocol structure figured out, to be able to complete the server.

I guess whilst we sit around and wait, i could take a look at a source that has most of the protocol implemented & start documenting it on a wiki or something, unless this information is already documented somewhere?

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Originally Posted by ChingChong23 I am willing to work with others to achieve something nice. all we essentially need is a vanilla server engine with a decent plugin implementation for handling everything from packets to disk IO. and as much as i dislike saying this, the server should be written in C# simply because of the amount of devs around here familiar with it. Project should be on github not svn. Project framework should be written with balanced parallelism in mind (a forkjoin implementation for example), not just a static amount of threads handling different areas. There should be a large amount of criticism on all parts of the server from people that have a higher expertise in specific areas and can provide a valid argument for their criticism, to ultimately achieve the best setup. I believe we should be using whatever client version has the most protocol structure figured out, to be able to complete the server. I guess whilst we sit around and wait, i could take a look at a source that has most of the protocol implemented & start documenting it on a wiki or something, unless this information is already documented somewhere?

Sounds decent. A good way to waste some useless time.

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Originally Posted by ChingChong23 I am willing to work with others to achieve something nice. all we essentially need is a vanilla server engine with a decent plugin implementation for handling everything from packets to disk IO. and as much as i dislike saying this, the server should be written in C# simply because of the amount of devs around here familiar with it. Project should be on github not svn. Project framework should be written with balanced parallelism in mind (a forkjoin implementation for example), not just a static amount of threads handling different areas. There should be a large amount of criticism on all parts of the server from people that have a higher expertise in specific areas and can provide a valid argument for their criticism, to ultimately achieve the best setup. I believe we should be using whatever client version has the most protocol structure figured out, to be able to complete the server. I guess whilst we sit around and wait, i could take a look at a source that has most of the protocol implemented & start documenting it on a wiki or something, unless this information is already documented somewhere?

Your wasting your time, just so your aware, there have been plenty of attempts to make open source projects, people just aren't interested like I said, here's one that I started.

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Originally Posted by Korvacs Your wasting your time, just so your aware, there have been plenty of attempts to make open source projects, people just aren't interested like I said, here's one that I started. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

to be honest, a lot of people don't like that old client version, they like conquer without the bp, lottery and shit, but to go back to actual classic days is a bit of a put off. for example i logged into Love2Hate and i just couldn't play 5 minutes of it, the interface feel, the font, the jumping was a huge put off. 5000-5100 is without implementing certain features is a good version imo, each to their own though.

there is also the fact that your COSP is not plugin driven nor does it have an api setup for easy content creation or scripting. this is probably also a reason why nobody contributed.

Open source will NEVER work here. The people interested in development are either busy with their own projects or have moved on.

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Originally Posted by ChingChong23 to be honest, a lot of people don't like that old client version, they like conquer without the bp, lottery and shit, but to go back to actual classic days is a bit of a put off. for example i logged into Love2Hate and i just couldn't play 5 minutes of it, the interface feel, the font, the jumping was a huge put off. 5000-5100 is without implementing certain features is a good version imo, each to their own though. there is also the fact that your COSP is not plugin driven nor does it have an api setup for easy content creation or scripting. this is probably also a reason why nobody contributed.

I think that you don't really understand what open source is, had someone suggested an api and plugins, then it could have been implemented, the whole problem with that project, if you read the thread is that I basically ended up pleading for people to give me any feedback on the project because I just wasn't getting any.

And the project supported multiple versions, or at least that was the plan but no one was willing to contribute towards implementing others, so again not really any issue there beyond people couldn't be bothered.

Sorry but this sort of project just wont work here any more, you missed the boat by 6 years.

ok, current open source (or leaked) servers, surely they have to have close to the amount of content of the binary servers? if they do, why are people not using those and still using binary? are they unstable/buggy? shit can be fixed..