PSEmu - PlanetSide Emulator - Page 3

Naeadil · 2015-07-29, 06:17 AM

Really excited for this! The most important thing is just get a working server. Don't worry about excluding or including certain equipment/weapons/vehicles or balancing. When the community (that is bound to form around this project) creates servers and rulesets, that is when we can worry about it. Really looking forward to seeing some prototype stuff (screenshots/videos) or a technical alpha test in the future.

Personally, I've been waiting for someone to do this for years, I'm surprised a public version hasn't been made yet. I'm glad this is going to be accomplished because we all know that PlanetSide 1 won't be online forever. I just hope that we can have an emulator that is capable of replicating the awesome game we all love.

Don't worry about what Daybreak thinks -- Project 1999 didn't either and look at where they are now.

OpolE · 2015-07-29, 03:35 PM

Posted to SWGEmu & EQ1999 forums to spread the word and ask from kind advice. If we can follow a process or a manual/user guide then it would be a great start.

SWGEmu Post to keep an eye on.

http://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthr...99#post1231499

EQ1999 Post to keep an eye on

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=204099

Chord · 2015-07-30, 12:25 AM

Originally Posted by OpolE

Posted to SWGEmu & EQ1999 forums to spread the word and ask from kind advice. If we can follow a process or a manual/user guide then it would be a great start.

SWGEmu Post to keep an eye on.

http://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthr...99#post1231499

Thanks! I'll keep my eyes on it.

OpolE · 2015-07-30, 02:44 PM

A note from EQ forums.

"I think a big component of building eqemu was having a live server to do packet captures from. If PS1 is no longer available it would be pretty difficult to emulate it just having clients and no server....

Regards,
Mg"

Chord · 2015-07-31, 12:58 AM

Originally Posted by OpolE

A note from EQ forums.

"I think a big component of building eqemu was having a live server to do packet captures from. If PS1 is no longer available it would be pretty difficult to emulate it just having clients and no server....

Regards,
Mg"

Glad to see we're getting a lot of support from this and other communities.
As for packet captures, I feel the same way. If that server goes down tomorrow or next week, this project just got a whole lot harder, if not impossible. Essentially all of the analysis would have to be static instead of dynamic.

Static analysis is always slower as it requires you to read assembly. So far I've mostly done static analysis for insight and for ideas of where to hook. Combined with this, dynamic analysis does wonders for insight in to how the code actually works.

I've been considering dropping any actual server development for now and instead just focusing on capturing packets. If I made a tool to easily capture and record packets, then I could distribute it and have you guys help out. Then if the server goes down, we'd still have an awesome record of a ton of packets containing server responses. This is pretty good, but still difficult as there is no context beyond time for such a packet dump. That's why I've considered making a FRAPS-like capturing tool that captures at a super low frame rate, records packets, and logs all in-game keypresses and mouse movements. For example: an old game called Shadowbane had an emulator created for it after the servers went down. The key to their success was Shadowbane's ability to record replays. These became a primary way to reverse engineer the game's functionality without an active server.

It's hard to say what the most important thing is I should do right now, but maybe packet capturing should be it. Code can be written later. What do you guys think?

p0intman · 2015-07-31, 04:00 AM

while we have the ability, analysis and research right now.

edit: I may have lost my authenticator. if I did, id have to create a new account. thats fine with me, really.

yumad · 2015-07-31, 10:46 AM

I had to create an account to comment on this.

I am in 110% and will help with whatever I can to make this happen.

As weird as this sounds I had a random dream last night about Planetside and decided to do a quick search to see if anything has progressed towards a private server.

I am currently going to school for software engineering but just started taking relevant classes pertaining to the degree so I don't think I will be much help as of yet, but if you give me the tools I will find a way. This has been a dream of mine since I was very young.

Please PM me if you need assistance.

p0intman · 2015-07-31, 01:48 PM

You know what we need? A website to discuss this more on. I wouldn't trust this website to be a good place to actually get into the details of this undertaking.

Some other stuff we should do: Collect as many screenshots and video of the game, its mechanics and all of that fun stuff. We need to archive it so that when/if we lose our resource for collecting information (PS1 servers inevitably go down) we still have screenshots and footage to go off of with regards to mechanics, and not our memory.

We should also look at archiving as many websites as we can with regards to game information (planetside syndicate, etc) and rehosting it on our own wiki, similar to the SWGEmu scrapbook. http://www.swgemu.com/archive/scrapbookv51/tree/

Chord · 2015-07-31, 07:54 PM

Originally Posted by p0intman

while we have the ability, analysis and research right now.

edit: I may have lost my authenticator. if I did, id have to create a new account. thats fine with me, really.

Yup. Lets do it. I'll be working on getting a tool that can assist in packet capturing and context. Good tooling is the only way I see this getting done efficiently. Hopefully I can get this "tool" in a good state for testing. Research is needed and I have the feeling I need to work fast.

Also, we need a complete list of game features that need their corresponding packet captures. I don't have infinite time to do them, but with your guys' help, we might be able to build a repository of PCAP files that gets the behavior we're looking for.

Originally Posted by p0intman

You know what we need? A website to discuss this more on. I wouldn't trust this website to be a good place to actually get into the details of this undertaking.

Some other stuff we should do: Collect as many screenshots and video of the game, its mechanics and all of that fun stuff. We need to archive it so that when/if we lose our resource for collecting information (PS1 servers inevitably go down) we still have screenshots and footage to go off of with regards to mechanics, and not our memory.

We should also look at archiving as many websites as we can with regards to game information (planetside syndicate, etc) and rehosting it on our own wiki, similar to the SWGEmu scrapbook. http://www.swgemu.com/archive/scrapbookv51/tree/

Yeah I didn't expect this to happen so soon, but I feel like this is already needing a website myself. I don't know how to do hosting as anything I can do right now would de-anonomize me. The only reason I care about this is from a legal perspective. Decisions...

p0intman · 2015-08-01, 01:06 AM

idea - we could just set any forum to private and require verification through other channels (PMs here, people we all collectively know vouching for one another... basically keep it within the circle of people we all mutually trust for a while?)

we dont even need to call the PSEmu site PSEmu if we want to go quiet on it.

OpolE · 2015-08-01, 07:18 AM

Urgent: We need a good trusted place to host the PS_Installer.exe.

Can someone recommend one or provide a link please.

Naeadil · 2015-08-01, 02:11 PM

I agree, the most important thing we can do right now is collecting packets, we never know when PlanetSide 1 servers will be shut down for good. We are lucky that the live server is still up so we can get a more accurate representation of the game when the emulator is actually coded. If you can make a tool and some instructions on what needs to be done, I'm sure many are willing to volunteer (including myself).

OpolE · 2015-08-01, 07:04 PM

Planetside launch link

http://launch.soe.com/app/installer/...side_setup.exe

p0intman · 2015-08-01, 08:11 PM

fuck it. if nobody else wants to set one up, ill get one going within a week. i have a copy of the installer as well.

KingFeraligatr · 2015-08-01, 08:15 PM

I can't stand my own suckiness, the toxicness, or the hacking any loner. I've broken down more than once.. I'll run test or screenies for now, but I hope to be done in general play for a long time. Can't stand the game anymore. The sooner you can get this done and make me not live in fear anymore, the better.