It's back
Furiously:
Someone just dumped the source code on a group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrs_B6WRRJM&t=110s
ezrast:
What's it like technically? Fully rebuilt from original source code, or is some reverse engineered? Are content and assets intact? Latest version from before shutdown or something earlier?
I'm keen but also lazy.
Furiously:
It looks 15 years old. Still has a great character creator. I have not gotten passed deciding what to try.
Trippy:
God I had so many characters in that game.
Zetor:
Quote from: ezrast on May 04, 2019, 09:05:16 PM
What's it like technically? Fully rebuilt from original source code, or is some reverse engineered? Are content and assets intact? Latest version from before shutdown or something earlier?
I'm keen but also lazy.
Basically there are two versions floating around, both of them based on the original source code + server content as of the shutdown:
[*]Issue 24: This is the state of the game as it was when it shut down, including the latest beta patch (Issue 24) that sat for 6+months on the beta server and was basically finished, only there was no point in moving it to live because of the shutdown. Compared to I23, it has better survivability for blasters, more powerset proliferation, travel powers at level 4 (I think that was an I24 thing?) and improvements to power pools -- like, there is a fifth power in each pool that's pretty strong.
[*]Issue 25: This is a homebrew patch of the game on top of I24 by the person operating the 'super secret servers' since 2013. Many of the changes are arbitrary, but some of them are based on stuff developers said in the past (there was supposedly a closed test build of i25 in the works when the shutdown news arrived). It has a new archetype (sentinel - blaster primaries, tanker secondaries), a new zone (Kallisti Wharf), some new powersets, and a bunch of QoL features added (no more microtransactions, lot more storage for enhancements, all Mission Architect story arcs can get full rewards, ...). You can find the full change list here
[/list]
Both versions come with a full server-side database + data files, so all content is as you'd remember it. The secret I25 server (that operated between 2013 and 2019) had the full character database too, but that one needed to be nuked as soon as people learned about the entire thing. This means that characters and user-provided content (Mission Architect) is not there anymore, but all dev content is as it was.
Due to the, uh, logistics of the entire situation, binary versions of I25 were distributed first, and this is what's running on the current large set of servers (Homecoming, with ~6k concurrent players). There have been some other servers popping up very recently that are based on modded I25 as well as test deployments of I24 (this took some time because the code is ARCHAIC, as in 'Visual C 2005 with legacy dependency hell' archaic). There is a very active dev community called Ouro that is porting, documenting, and modernizing the code.
Apparently some people (TonyV - the manager of the Titan Network fansites from way-back-when, and Leandro - the maintainer of the super sekrit I25 server who released the code a few weeks ago to everyone else) are in talks with NCSoft to possibly get a legal solution and either a Project 99-like semi-official status, or tacit acceptance without legal threats in the future (like with SWG emus). This will probably take at least a few more weeks to shake out, one way or another.
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