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Skelos

My private EL custom server

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Hi,

i would create a personal custom server for private use only. I think this is legal (see the last post of

Entropy here).

 

My server is, for example, http://www.myelcustomserver.com

I was created http://www.myelcustomserver.com/updates/custom_files.lst with only one row:

 

MD5(custom/player/skelos/meshes/cape1_blue.bmp)=a6a88227f9bbfc95abe0df1f462b618f

 

After this I was typed www.myelcustomserver.com under official EL server www.eternal-lands.com in

c:\Documents and settings\Skelos\My doument\Eternal lands\1_5_0\custom_mirrors.lst

 

www.eternal-lands.com
www.myelcustomserver.com

 

and I was protect it to write (without this protection after any EL reboot my custom_mirrors.lst has one only

row with the official custom server).

 

When i reboot EL i see that this don't work. What i need? I can create this custom server fully legal?

 

Thank you.

Skelos

 

 

P.S. This Md5 code is correct (calculated with a md5_file PHP function) and I'm sure that my file exist in my server.

Edited by Skelos

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You didn't create a custom server, you created a custom update server.

Yes, it is legal, but you don't get any support from us for it.

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You didn't create a custom server, you created a custom update server.

Yes, it is legal, but you don't get any support from us for it.

 

Ok. Thank you very much. I will try many and many times... i think :P

 

Skelos.

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Yeah I do, feel free to spend $5 to come and chat to me on the PK server and I'll tell you what the problem you are having is ;)

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Why can't you just post it here? It's not like it is your right to know it alone. Pls give some documentation about it because i'm intrested in it too :P

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Documentation?

 

Have you seen just how much documentation the client actually contains?

 

I had to sit there scratching my head for the best part of three days trying to get my head around the custom clothing before I could code it into the client.

 

Just the same with the quickspell stuff, I had to study the code for a good while before I understood it enough to be able to come up with the prototype for the client.

 

The information is freely available in the client for anyone to study. Should the fact that it is not documented be held against me because I was the developer of it and therefore have an intimate knowledge of its workings? Possibly, but I am not the only client dev that relies on others having a level of expertise in the subject rather than spending 5 lines explaining each line of code I write.

 

As I stated, I do know what the issue is and how to resolve it. It has also been stated that no official support will be given for custom clothing servers.

 

Yes, I am trying to get players onto the PK server every chance I get.

 

No I am not on commission to get people over there :P

 

My offer still stands with regards to releasing the information.

 

Buy a char on the PK server and come and chat with me :P

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After this I was typed www.myelcustomserver.com under official EL server www.eternal-lands.com in

c:\Documents and settings\Skelos\My doument\Eternal lands\1_5_0\custom_mirrors.lst

 

www.eternal-lands.com
www.myelcustomserver.com

 

I think I can probably help you out here, but to confirm my suspicion of what the update code does, can you post the output your error_log.txt after trying to run the client to grab the custom update?

 

I *suspect* that your problems are due to the fact that those mirrors are expected to be mirrors, and not independent servers, thus either one will suffice for any request. You would likely have better luck setting your private server to sync from the main server itself (rarely, of course), and removing the 'official' server from your mirrors list. (As described in the thread you linked to.)

Edited by crusadingknight

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I purpose a group study external to EL (forum,game and other) for try to make documentation about custom servers.

 

Someone want to partecipate?

Skelos

Edited by Skelos

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My offer of the solution still stands, and my price (join the PK server) is still the same.

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Shush or I'll consider PKing you :P

 

In fact nah, tell all (both? your only? your imaginary?) your friends to join too :D

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The information is freely available in the client for anyone to study. Should the fact that it is not documented be held against me because I was the developer of it and therefore have an intimate knowledge of its workings? Possibly, but I am not the only client dev that relies on others having a level of expertise in the subject rather than spending 5 lines explaining each line of code I write.

I can't believe I'm reading this.

 

You didn't document your code, or write it in a manner that's easy to read and maintain, and after stating this publicly you then give someone who's asking for help demands?! :D

 

You've got to be kidding me. Someone pinch me, please!

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The issue he is having has absolutely nothing to do with the code.

 

As I said, I had to figure out myself what the problem was, and he is paying for that experience.

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The information is freely available in the client for anyone to study. Should the fact that it is not documented be held against me because I was the developer of it and therefore have an intimate knowledge of its workings? Possibly, but I am not the only client dev that relies on others having a level of expertise in the subject rather than spending 5 lines explaining each line of code I write.

I can't believe I'm reading this.

 

You didn't document your code, or write it in a manner that's easy to read and maintain, and after stating this publicly you then give someone who's asking for help demands?! :D

 

You've got to be kidding me. Someone pinch me, please!

And as I stated, the client has pretty much no code documentation at all. If there is an issue with the eye candy and karen is not about the problem stays until he fixes it. I have intimate knowledge of parts of the code and only a passing acquaintance with the code as a whole.

 

Parts of the code I wrote were deliberately obtuse to prevent the possibility of macroing using it (the quickspell code is rife with exploitation possibilities. Should I hold macroers hands while they use the code I wrote to break the rules?)

 

I did not document the code as there is no requirement to document the code. The general rule appears to be "if it works it's in, we will fix any issues it causes later" which I accepted when I decided to become a client developer.

 

If someone comes along and expects support when Entropy himself told him he was having none, why shouldn't my support come at a price? And then to ask the devs to document the code that he needed information about smacks of insolence. Why not ask for documentation for the whole code instead of one single part - where the documentation of the code he asked for would not have solved the problem for him anyway?

 

I could have given him his answer in 2 lines had he decided it was worth contributing to the game. Now I guess I'll just forget what those 2 lines were.

 

*zap* your mind has been erased.

 

Huh what's going on?

 

<subliminal>get people onto the PK server</subliminal>

 

Happy hunting.

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Sorry LabRat but I completely disagree with you. Macroing is not a valid excuse to not document your code. If someone really decide to macro, he will understand the code whatever its difficulty.

IMO, when you work on a project for which the sources are shared by several people, you must document your code! An undocumented code is good to go to the trash. What will we do if you decide to leave the dev team and there's a bug in your code?

 

BTW, Karen has made an effort to document her code and explain what are the different classes she uses. And her code is enough clear to be debugged if there's any problem.

Unfortunately, it's not the case for all developers...

 

When I started to work on the client, I've looked for a doc so I've generated the doxygen documentation of the code. But I was quite disappointed when I saw that the documentation wasn't up to date. So it was completly useless... So it took me a huge time to understand how is working the whole code and I'm still discovering things every days. And so far I can tell you that in some parts of the code, it's really a big mess! No documentation, no modularity (same formulas are used everywhere but no functions are concentrating the code), useless code and so on...

 

So sorry but when I hear that you're doing non understandable code just because of macroing, it really piss me off!

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And as I stated, the client has pretty much no code documentation at all. If there is an issue with the eye candy and karen is not about the problem stays until he fixes it. I have intimate knowledge of parts of the code and only a passing acquaintance with the code as a whole.

Right, so if everyone else is doing it that makes it alright? I see this excuse so often with people who don't document their code yet write stuff that's unreadable. It is not an excuse. Use decent programming practices whatever you're coding!

Edit: Karen produced an entire HTML file explaining the majority of her code.

 

Parts of the code I wrote were deliberately obtuse to prevent the possibility of macroing using it (the quickspell code is rife with exploitation possibilities. Should I hold macroers hands while they use the code I wrote to break the rules?)

Jesus. It's an open source client, people are gonna see what you write anyway. The job of macro-prevention is largely the responsibility of the server. There is very little the client can do to prevent macroing. Anyway, WTF does macroing have to do with custom clothing mirror?

 

I did not document the code as there is no requirement to document the code. The general rule appears to be "if it works it's in, we will fix any issues it causes later" which I accepted when I decided to become a client developer.

Again, no excuse. That approach to a programming project is like building a dam and saying "oh sod it, we'll patch the cracks later".

 

If someone comes along and expects support when Entropy himself told him he was having none, why shouldn't my support come at a price?

Why SHOULD it? You're not Entropy. What's it costing you to share?

 

And then to ask the devs to document the code that he needed information about smacks of insolence. Why not ask for documentation for the whole code instead of one single part - where the documentation of the code he asked for would not have solved the problem for him anyway?

What you're doing is also somewhat insolent, too.

 

I could have given him his answer in 2 lines had he decided it was worth contributing to the game. Now I guess I'll just forget what those 2 lines were.

I'm all for the encouragement and support to help Ent. and Roja get some cash for their hard work, but that doesn't warrant bribing people. I donate GBs of bandwidth a month to EL, without expectation of recompense whatsoever. Do you see me saying "oh hihi, I'm holier than thou"? No.

 

I can't stop laughing.

Edited by Placid

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c'est la vie en la grande monde, you gets what you pays for.

 

Doxygen is definitely not the be all and end all of documentation creation, to be honest with you I find it easier to code without reading the definition of a function.

 

If I need to get a result back from a function that I am unaware of I go and read the function itself so I can understand it and if it does not do exactly what I desire I will happily write a second function that shares a lot of commonality with the first function but which does return the result that I desire. And creating 2 functions like that means that people used to the first function will not need to code defensively because I chose to rewrite the first function to suit myself which is given the apt name "creeping features" and cries of "but my code worked fine yesterday" from other developers.

 

Once the client is stable, then is the time to begin looking for ways to optimise the code - not while the code is still in development.

 

I often revisit code 4 or 5 times and rewrite it, as I get a better grasp of how the code all interrelates I find that I can get a routine down from around 400 lines to around 30 optimised lines after the 3rd or 4th iteration.

 

As an afterthought, a lot of duplicated code happens with the #ifdef statements that so liberally pepper the code. Once the code is stable a lot of #ifdef'd code can (and I hope will) be combined into common class-like functions.

 

Anyway I digress. The problem he has is absolutely and unequivocably nothing at all to do with the custom clothing code - that works just as was intended. This thread is not a help me compile the client request, it is a help me get support where support has been denied thread.

 

I offered better than support, I offered the solution in return for a consultancy fee. Yay me for being a capitalist dog - even though I was not the intended recipient of the fee, the game creator himself was. Hang me for trying to expand the userbase on the PK server.

 

And as for

Macroing is not a valid excuse to not document your code
I beg to differ. I sat down and discussed at length with one of the server gods the possibility of macroing with the quickbar code, and even did a proof of concept test. I was originally going to completely obfuscate that code but we decided to just make it difficult to code the actual spells_*.dat file instead.

 

 

Offer withdrawn. I hope one of you guys can figure out the problem for him instead of focussing on my documentation skills.

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Well, I really don't know what to answer when I see such a way to behave in a team project...

I'll not try to arg on something like code optimization, modularity and documentation because it's useless and I don't have time for that.

The only thing I can say is that if I had to hire someone on a project, you'll definitely not pass the tests.

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Ok, just to clarify a few things:

1. I do NOT think that the client should be obsfuscated to avoid macroing. leave the macroing up to us, we dealt with it before, and we can deal with it now.

 

2. We really appreciate comments in the code, and I think that everyone should document their code, at least to a basic level, explaining what each function does (if it is not obvious), and explaining the tricky things that might happen.

 

3. I don't mind a consultancy fee, but see #2

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