Shadow copy of EQ

[LordFeshlak]

Hi,

here's a thought I was having a while back that would totally kick-ass :)

We have the technology to sniff and decode the datastream (ShowEQ), we also have the technology to emulate an EQ server (EQEmu/Hackersquest). Would it be possible to build a program that would sniff the datastream running between the true client and the server(s), and feed that datastream to a second client? The responses from that second client would need to be redirected to /dev/null I suppose, unless there's some interaction going on that's needed to prevent the client from dying.

Anyone got thoughts on this? I would build something like this myself, if I had anything resembling programming experience beyond Hello, World :)

[Mr. Suspicious]

I fail to see any reason why you want to do this.

[genius]

I don't get it.

R/S
Genius

[LordFeshlak]

Hmm.. Should've included that part of my thought process as well perhaps :)

The reason to do this would be to use the second client to explore the zone as it currently is without disturbing anything. See which mobs are spawned exactly where, check who's camping what spot, you name it. Kinda like ShowEQ but from a first person view. I know most of what this would give is already possible with the flat ShowEQ view, but ShowEQ doesn't always give an accurate view of the situation (line of sight of mobs, etc)

[Mr Guy]

Well you could use it to provide a non interactive EQ demo, but other than that....

Of course you could also pipe out your video card to a moniter but hey, some people are always for the hardway.

Of COURSE someone COULD do it, is the answer to your question.

But I still wanted relate this story to you, on just that topic.

My wife and I met in college. I was a computer science major and she was in english. She was actually a year behind me because I transferred from a big school to a smaller more prestigious one, and she was coming right out of high school. We met and talked alot and became very good friends, exactly what every man wants to be, am I right? Friends with a beautiful woman? Blyeah. Anyway, guy after guy wasn't treating her right, and I was there for her every time to help her pick of the peices. Eventually we (she) fell in love, and we got married after we graduated. We graduated in the same year, since English is one of those fields you can do in three years without going insane. After we got married we settled down in New Jersey, where we live now. One day last summer, I decided to surprise her, and I took her to the Philedelphia Zoo. There we saw an elephant. It was big and grey. Man, that was one big, grey elephant.





Exactly. Who the hell cares.

[genius]

So you mean a 3D view of it all? But all in "bullet-time". You could just wander around The Matrix and then go back to your "real" game?

Sounds to me like it is possible maybe but a huge waste of resources and valuable coding time. But that is just MHO.

R/S
Genius

[Ratt]

The problem with this is you wouldn't be able to operating any moving parts... IE - doors.

What really just needs to happen is a spawnlist dump and then feed it to the emulator to populate the mobs in their current positions.

That would accomplish what you want with a lot less trouble and timing issues I can envision making a 'shadow' client.

[Yueh]

But was the elephant Asian or African??? You have to tell us, we're all hooked now! :D

[clh01]

I'm just curious if it was 1 or 2 elephants that carried the coconut?

aside from that, it sounds like a neat idea, would be espically useful in zones you personally have not been in before(hard to read the maps in some cases for the first time), or new zones that have no map yet
but as others have said... probably more effort than it's really worth

[Gullork]

It is an interesting idea though.

Turn off clipping, make some kind of variable speed... like 1, 2, 3 or 4x normal speed (mega sow). Run through the zone or dungeon and get a first person feel for how things currently exist.

Yup, a programmers nightmare. Still an interesting idea :)

<edit: by clipping I don't mean the distance you see... I mean nothing is solid, like clipping in FPS games>

[Gungadin]

I like the idea, sort of like being a ghost, you can wander around, see the mobs as they move around, check spawns and pathing etc in complete immunity. (i'm pretty sure that eq still sends data on all the spawns in the zone not just stuff in view). The ultimate non aggro.
But as mentioned previously, you would not be abe to pass through doors etc, you would not see players or spell effects, or traps etc, you could not cast spells (eg levitate in case you fall down a pit) and you would see very strange stuff when your actual character did stuff.
Hmm, if your main levitates(or sows) does the ghost too, mebee that would fix that :-)
Nice idea though.

[Ratt]

It's not all that much of a nightmare, depending on the scope.

Take the base emulator, feed it position data on mobs, etc... on a regular interval and you've got your shadow client. It would actually be pretty easy with a few modifications to the emulator. (IE - open up a UDP port to forward all the zoning data/movement data to)

You might want to talk to the emu guys and see if they can put hooks into the program to take in a datastream and display it on the client.

It would make for some interesting collision effects (problems) from a play standpoint. But if you use it strictly for a 3D SEQ and your Avatar is the functional equivilent of a zoomed map being moved around, it's not really that far off.

[RSB]

one thing your really wouldn't be able to see people camping spawns. What you would see it either their position when zoning in or where you last saw them.

[TweedleDee]

Interesting idea - basically and invis to all Eye of Zomm. I could understand the usefullness of this in the absense of seq, but it really wouldn't give you any more (or even as much) info as SEQ already does. Would be great for screenies of Cazic Thule and such, but other than that... Also, might be fairly usefull for mapping high level zones without worrying about aggro... (i.e. planes of power) hmm...

[RSB]

to much work for mapping. just load up the emulator and map from that. Same thing for screen shots.

[PawnOrc]

Watching Ratt, et al., develope this idea is the most interesting thread I have read in a year. You are very smart guys.

[Lykan]

I really like you idea, to be ablke to get a first person veiw would be nice.

I however enjoy being able to see the whole zone in one small litlle map.

It would however be very nice where th map overlays on top of itself, and it is hard to figure out.

[LordFeshlak]

Originally posted by PawnOrc
Watching Ratt, et al., develope this idea is the most interesting thread I have read in a year. You are very smart guys.

Yeah, this is a very skilled team of developers and/or designers :) I hadn't really expected people to start thinking this seriously about it..

Anyway, if something like this ever gets developed, I'd love to help test it (got experience in setting up SEQ and both EthQuest and EQEmu)

[Zeppo]

Sounds really cool.

I would just like to get SEQ working with EthernalQuest so I could see where I was at while I explored the zones and learned the layout.
Anyone got any idea how to make that work?

[winseq]

I'd just like to see a 3D viewer for for EQ client map files.

I know there's a utility out there that can extract and convert them to other formats. Textures would be nice. Zones look a lot different without textures.

I know there's also some hacks to let you use the tutorial thing to run around zones. Doesn't work on all zones though.

Some way to familiarize yourself with a zone in the context of the EQ client without risking death or getting lost.

Maybe have the ability to dump spawns to a file (from a real session) and then load them up in such a viewer so you can get an idea of spawn placement for those zones that tend to be mostly static spawns.

Aside from the spawns, a '3D zone viewer' should be doable with just using the data available in the EQ client's directory.

[se7en]

Awesome Idea! Would be floored to see something like this take form.

Very good ideas guys =)