EQ2Emulator 2013!
Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 4:00 pm
Hello Community,
From all of us at EQ2Emulator.net, we wish you a safe and prosperous New Year!
We have many exciting things planned for 2013 and I am happy to see a renewed interest in our little Emulator over the past few months. We need player/testers just as much as we need developers and content designers - without you, the Community - we cannot build a solid emulator for Everquest II... so I thank you for your continued support.
SOE Takes EQII F2P!
We get asked a lot, why are we continuing to build an emulator of a "Free to Play" MMO? It's simple, really. The primary reason is "because we can". It is challenging and fun to figure out how the Live game functions and build a backend that emulates that functionality. Unless you have experienced it, you cannot know the joy of clicking that Woodworking Table and seeing the recipe dialog pop up in our clients - knowing our code is what caused that to happen. It takes hours, even days, to figure out "how did they do that?" but when we do, it is very exciting!
It is mostly for the "challenge" that we do it, but a side-effect is the great benefit to the community to run their own unrestricted Everquest II servers for private or public game play. Not to mention the fully customizable worlds that can be created based on the Everquest II game design and models, the options are limitless. A server admin with enough ambition and drive could conceivably surpass SOE's own designs for EQII in game content. Now THAT is exciting
EQ2Emu in 2013
Our main goal is to keep the emulator compatible with the live EQ2 clients - something we have not been able to do for years. Since EQII clients are no longer available as DVD sets for new expansions, the only way for us to progress forward with the emulator is to use current client functionality. With the help of our new PacketAnalyzer tool (designed by John Adams and built by Scatman), we can diagnose a patched Everquest2.exe quickly and update our structs and opcodes to allow the new live clients access to our game worlds. This is a major progress for the team.
With the [patient] help of Jabantiz and Zcoretri, the entire team now has a better understanding of C++ and the opcodes/structs magic that keeps everything running. Xinux has been the champion of our Packet Collector tool and keeps our opcodes up-to-date soon as a patch hits the live servers. Now that we all have a greater understanding of things, our momentum will only increase.
Things to look for in EQ2Emu 2013 -
- Live Client compatibility (again!)
- DB Milestone 2 with over 400 zones populated*
- New and more powerful LUA options for our server core
- Brand new Items lists (over 140,000 items) based on CoE collections
- Revamp of all spells and abilities based on CoE collections
- Completion of old server functionality as well as new features implemented (see ProjMan for details and scheduling)
- Many, many more things to come as the live game evolves, and hopefully our team grows
* Content Design is huge, so we do not expect to have every zone completed in 2013, but hoping for at least all of the Shattered Lands implemented as was promised 2 years ago.
What Can You Do?
More than ever, we need player populations on our test server(s) - specifically the EQ2Emulator server (EQ2TC). We need the feedback supplied by players and our community members as to the accuracy and functionality of our server implementations. We also need WIKI writers, badly! We're probably less than 1% documented right now, but our team is too small to stop and write Wiki docs without the server suffering in progression.
Mostly, we need you to communicate with us regularly, letting us know when something doesn't work right. Also, "tell a friend"! Build in-game communities, guilds, anything to test the functionality of our server and help us move forward together.
I don't know about you, but I am very excited about EQ2Emulator 2013! Thank you again for still being a part of this effort.
From all of us at EQ2Emulator.net, we wish you a safe and prosperous New Year!
We have many exciting things planned for 2013 and I am happy to see a renewed interest in our little Emulator over the past few months. We need player/testers just as much as we need developers and content designers - without you, the Community - we cannot build a solid emulator for Everquest II... so I thank you for your continued support.
SOE Takes EQII F2P!
We get asked a lot, why are we continuing to build an emulator of a "Free to Play" MMO? It's simple, really. The primary reason is "because we can". It is challenging and fun to figure out how the Live game functions and build a backend that emulates that functionality. Unless you have experienced it, you cannot know the joy of clicking that Woodworking Table and seeing the recipe dialog pop up in our clients - knowing our code is what caused that to happen. It takes hours, even days, to figure out "how did they do that?" but when we do, it is very exciting!
It is mostly for the "challenge" that we do it, but a side-effect is the great benefit to the community to run their own unrestricted Everquest II servers for private or public game play. Not to mention the fully customizable worlds that can be created based on the Everquest II game design and models, the options are limitless. A server admin with enough ambition and drive could conceivably surpass SOE's own designs for EQII in game content. Now THAT is exciting
EQ2Emu in 2013
Our main goal is to keep the emulator compatible with the live EQ2 clients - something we have not been able to do for years. Since EQII clients are no longer available as DVD sets for new expansions, the only way for us to progress forward with the emulator is to use current client functionality. With the help of our new PacketAnalyzer tool (designed by John Adams and built by Scatman), we can diagnose a patched Everquest2.exe quickly and update our structs and opcodes to allow the new live clients access to our game worlds. This is a major progress for the team.
With the [patient] help of Jabantiz and Zcoretri, the entire team now has a better understanding of C++ and the opcodes/structs magic that keeps everything running. Xinux has been the champion of our Packet Collector tool and keeps our opcodes up-to-date soon as a patch hits the live servers. Now that we all have a greater understanding of things, our momentum will only increase.
Things to look for in EQ2Emu 2013 -
- Live Client compatibility (again!)
- DB Milestone 2 with over 400 zones populated*
- New and more powerful LUA options for our server core
- Brand new Items lists (over 140,000 items) based on CoE collections
- Revamp of all spells and abilities based on CoE collections
- Completion of old server functionality as well as new features implemented (see ProjMan for details and scheduling)
- Many, many more things to come as the live game evolves, and hopefully our team grows
* Content Design is huge, so we do not expect to have every zone completed in 2013, but hoping for at least all of the Shattered Lands implemented as was promised 2 years ago.
What Can You Do?
More than ever, we need player populations on our test server(s) - specifically the EQ2Emulator server (EQ2TC). We need the feedback supplied by players and our community members as to the accuracy and functionality of our server implementations. We also need WIKI writers, badly! We're probably less than 1% documented right now, but our team is too small to stop and write Wiki docs without the server suffering in progression.
Mostly, we need you to communicate with us regularly, letting us know when something doesn't work right. Also, "tell a friend"! Build in-game communities, guilds, anything to test the functionality of our server and help us move forward together.
I don't know about you, but I am very excited about EQ2Emulator 2013! Thank you again for still being a part of this effort.