Hi all,

To intro myself... I've worked in the mobile industry for 5+ years making native mobile applications starting with BB 5 years ago to Android and iOS now. I also have some Ruby on Rails experience (minimal) and Windows Phone. I've alsoworked on C++/C# projects (mostly .NET ASPX stuff) in college, and I've also written some LUA drivers for lock hardware in the past in conjunction with Flash applications. I was looking into downloading the source and playing around with things on a branch because I'm curious, and I played EQ2 right when it came out in 2004 while playing EQ1 from Velious-PoP. I also raided religiously with a hardcore guild from DoF-Sentinel's Fate, so I have a good grasp for the game.

Lastly, I'd like to say I have a team of devs that are willing to help me out in development with years of experience. Now, we don't have the biggest experience with these type of apps, but we catch on pretty fast. Accolades aside, I'd like to state my goals and then state a few questions.

Goals:
* Create a somewhat classic Everquest 2 experience for players akin to Project1999.
* Classic How?
** Level cap 50
** No AA trees
** Zones returned to classic state.
*** Only starting zones are FP and Qeynos
*** Isle of Refuge return.
*** Mobs rescaled. (Solo mobs that are currently live replaced with their ^^ and ^^^ counterparts as were on live)
** Quests returned to classic (think these are still the same on live besides maybe the removal of boat access quests, class armor quests at 20, maybe some heritage and signature quests)
** Boat access quests returned.
** Classic itemization. (Not sure if the live itemization of classic content is any good)
** Modification of XP gain, returning to a more classic leveling experience. (Essentially slowing down rate of level by buffing the amount of exp needed to gain levels)

* Somewhat why?
** Class skills have been improved IMO over time. The combat system at release in 2004 was pretty terrible. Scaling to skills may need to be done, but I'm fine with using the latest iteration of skills.
** It may not be feasible to go back to the normal classic progression. Scout -> Bard -> Troubadour. It may just be too much work to make it work and keep things balanced.
** The new attribute system is a pretty big improvement over the old. Itemization may not stay entirely the same, that's a later priority.
** Thinking of adding in racial restrictions to classes akin to EQ1, giving different races innate buffs, etc.) to match a classic feel that I wish EQ2 had.

Questions:
* I tried to download the source... (who uses SVN nowadays...GIT bros), and I used my login credentials I made here, but it doesn't seem to work. Do I need access for this?
* At what level does the available source code enable a developer to modify content such as quests, zone availability, mob and item changes, exp per level, racial restrictions, etc.? Are these just LUA items that we can enable/disable/change to fit the needs I want for the server?

Finally, me and the devs that plan on working on this effort will be doing it as a side thing as we do have normal jobs, but we are definitely excited to attempt to recreate this experience as we feel people have a want and need to get back to the basics in MMO's, but their first love was EQ2, not EQ1. I admire the hardwork of the p1999 guys, and I want to build something for the EQ2 fanboys.

Thanks,

BennoFlo

Hello, BennoFlo, welcome to the community. I'll take a stab at answering some of the basic questions for you.

BennoFlo wrote:I tried to download the source... (who uses SVN nowadays...GIT bros), and I used my login credentials I made here, but it doesn't seem to work. Do I need access for this?

The link in the menu that takes you to the SVN Information page should show that you only need username: Anonymous, and no password, to access the public SVN. You can use a web browser and save each file, but I find that tedious, so I use TortoiseSVN.

BennoFlo wrote:At what level does the available source code enable a developer to modify content such as quests, zone availability, mob and item changes, exp per level, racial restrictions, etc.? Are these just LUA items that we can enable/disable/change to fit the needs I want for the server?

Spawns, Spells and Items (content) are all 100% implemented as far as appearances go (ie., you can build a sexy custom zone, equip a player, and cast a spell today, plus 100s of other features).

Quests are LUA driven, and the LUA system grows almost every day around here because it is huge. However, there is so much LUA functionality now, you could easily build a fully functional zone experience with what we have.

The combat and XP systems have been around for years, and are "functional enough" to offer a solid experience. Tweaks are still needed to XP calcs and such to be "live-like" but that is something we do as we go through content development.

Racial Restrictions (al la Classic EQ2) can likely be done via LUA mostly, in the interactions between player and NPC. Factions/Alliances work well, so you can easily ask a Freeport Guard to squash a pansy Elf any time.


Hope this helps, and I wish you luck in your effort. I myself dream of a Classic EQ2 experience and hope you and your team are successful. If you wish to offer your experience to the Core Development team here (always chasing Live -and- considering classic options), let me or Jabantiz know.

Thanks for the info. I must've totally looked over that line. I do have TortoiseSVN downloaded, so I'll just use that and make my own branches. Do you guys use Visual Studio for development?

If so, are the project files included in the source, and is it compatible with the latest VS version?

Also, I think once I jump in, get it building, running, and start testing, I'll get a better idea of what the starting point will be for the team. As we develop, any overlapping functionality still needing development (on the features page), I'll make sure we mix in, or at least let you know so you can merge it in from our branches.

I haven't used SVN in like 3 years since we moved to git and git-flow at the office, and even then we used SVN implementors plugins for Eclipse. Does TortoiseSVN allow for tagging, or will I have to do that from command line?

We use Visual Studio 2012, though the public Solution is still 2010 - didn't see many people compiling their own servers so I hadn't bothered updating it yet.. but our private dev branch is on 2012.

Everything you need should be included in the source folder, including dependencies. Theoretically, you launch /trunk/win/EQ2WorldVC10.sln, hit Compile, and you get an exe. In theory

I am no SVN expert, and know less about GIT, sorry. I have a personal dislike for GIT... like it was designed only for propeller-heads We continue to use SVN because it works, and we are a very simple development team here. I am not a fan of systems designed to be impossible to use (points to any accounting software EVAR).

BennoFlo wrote:* At what level does the available source code enable a developer to modify content such as quests, zone availability, mob and item changes, exp per level, racial restrictions, etc.? Are these just LUA items that we can enable/disable/change to fit the needs I want for the server?

Quests, mobs and spells are all highly lua customizable, items would be fairly hard to get back to classic just because there aren't a lot of resources out there that old. You can make any quest you want as well but getting the old quest dialogues and stuff would again be difficult.

As far as mechanics go our combat runs pretty smooth but the damage formulas are way off numbers wise, we don't have mitigation implemented or the damage you receive from primary stats. Crit chance, double attack that kind of stuff all works. We're also (right now) deving more support for spells pretty rapidly to get that system polished up, it's come a long way but still needs more work, EQ2's spell system is obviously fairly complicated

Another thing to keep in mind are client limitations, you can only do so much in what the client allows, and this has changed a lot since classic. Ask if you have any further questions.

thefoof,

Thanks for the info. We'll keep that in mind.

One good thing is I used to play DPS in my hardcore raiding guild, so we theorycrafted constantly, and I have a pretty decent grasp for DPS numbers as well as mitigation/avoidance.

My personal wish is that someone with "a team of developers" would be more interested in joining the Core EQ2Emu development team, to help with the entire project vs splintering off into a completely separate one. There's nothing I would love more than to finish this monster so we can get on to customization (or other projects). EQ2Emu has always driven towards "Classic EQ2" functionality for those who wish it, as well as running a current Live-like content base.

I'd like the Server to handle either, with extensive rulesets to govern features, even custom never-before-seen EQ2 features (like Bots, GuildWars, whatever...) I'd like your team to consider joining forces WITH us, so you can learn the code quicker to help with your effort, and we will benefit by your contributions as well without the mess of code merging.

PM me if you want to talk more about this option.