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Post by Bridger - Retired Paladin on Oct 10, 2016 19:15:42 GMT -5
I have learned that there are actually several FFXI private servers listed here: wiki.dspt.info/index.php/DarkStar_ServersBest one to me looks like legiondark.com Forums: legiondark.com/forums/ Claim they can "STS service give us the unique ability to transfer a character from ANY server to legion". Looks like they customized a few things. Think I'll play legitimately for a while, then next time I quit, I will probably port my character to this server. Anyone else tried this? Locke, I know you are still checking forums, so I guess this question is mostly for you. |
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Post by lockejv on Oct 10, 2016 21:49:32 GMT -5
Private servers look interesting, but I've never tried one. My biggest concern is the stability of the operation - how is the operator paying for the service (hosting)? And couldn't SE put an end to the server by sending a cease and desist to the ISP? If I'm going to invest time in a character on a private server, I guess I'd want some peace of mind it would be around for awhile.
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Post by Bridger - Retired Paladin on Oct 11, 2016 11:34:07 GMT -5
Paying for the server probably isn't a big deal at this point compared to how it was in 2002 when FFXI came out. In 1998 I could host 8 other players on StarCraft on my Win 95 PC, in 2006 I could host 32 Players on my PS3. With a newer computer and a basic cable internet connection, I suspect you could probably host 100 players without a problem. Now hosting 2000 players might be an issue. I bet it's just a few people managing this thing as a hobby. These guys are running from an Industrial Server. They GM on the side and actually do support tickets. Read about it a bit more. So that's the only one that would do character transfers, with a whole ton of exceptions. (No spells transfers, no quests/missions transfers, they restrict Kraken Clubs and relics). Only job at 99 will be main job, all other jobs are capped at 75 for the importer, so if you have two 99 level jobs, only the main will be 99, the other 75. Well there's a whole site wiki.dspt.info/index.php/Main_Page is about how to setup your own FFXI server. I might actually set this up at home and have my own FFXI Offline. Didn't realize FFXI runs off of a SQL database, I have worked with SQL at my job a lot in the last few years, so I bet I could go into the tables and manually set my character. I suspect the Missions/Quests/Spells are in other tables and the person writing the import utility didn't bother to write that script. Don't know how long some of these would be around, I've seen this before on other games. Often current companies don't care enough to take legal action about older games. SE might not care at this point about FFXI. It this was done with FFXIV I am sure they would flip. I checked out the TitanSentinels site, and there was a mention that they went to a private server, but I couldn't find a reference to the name. |
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Post by Bridger - Retired Paladin on Oct 11, 2016 11:40:55 GMT -5
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Post by lockejv on Oct 12, 2016 12:28:16 GMT -5
Damn, it seems relatively easy to set up. It would be a lot of fun to walk around Vana'diel in god-mode. How did the server source code leak? I can't imagine it was reverse engineered.
edit: after reading some more about the source code (it's on github), it very well could have been reverse engineered. It must have been one hell of a project.
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Post by Bridger - Retired Paladin on Oct 12, 2016 14:23:50 GMT -5
Looks like it was reverse engineered. Apparently DarkStar is the project to do this, and there is a note here: wiki.dspt.info/index.php/Missions where in 2013 all of the missions weren't initially working. Now there are many more working missions. Here on the LegionDark server the admin talks about how he got Mog Wardrobe 3 & 4 working. legiondark.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1730Once you know some Sequel a lot of this stuff isn't that difficult, just takes time. I was thinking about contacting the admin and saying I might be interested in making an Excel VBA that would allow people to manually input what missions they were on, then the VBA would kick out SQL scripts to set the missions for the accounts. I am sure he knows how to do that and for whatever reason hasn't. There might be some other support issues that go with it, such as if a certain quest is required for a mission, if that quest doesn't get set with the mission, it might cause that person's account to crash. Fixing that type of thing is a pain, so with 3x base xp or whatever the DarkLegion guys are doing, it probably isn't worth the hassle to support. |
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Post by lockejv on Oct 12, 2016 16:02:14 GMT -5
Once you know some Sequel a lot of this stuff isn't that difficult, just takes time. I minored in Computer Science and was a web application developer for a few years (utilizing mysql and sql server). Sniffing and decoding the client-server traffic isn't difficult. Reverse engineering a database from scratch to manage it all, and then programming the server to respond to the client in real-time to make the game work is on the higher end of the difficulty spectrum for coding assignments IMO. Having a functional client available certainly helps, but recreating the back-end is impressive. |
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Post by Bridger - Retired Paladin on Oct 12, 2016 18:57:54 GMT -5
I wasn't thinking they reverse engineered the database from scratch, but wow, if they did that, that was impressive. I guess they might have. Maybe they decompiled and executed a few lines to see what table commands were executed and built it from there.
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