Change on Test

[Jel321]

seq is busted on test arm. Kinda like when PoP first came out.

Im gonna guess the packet structure has changed.

Just a heads up...

[nok]

Seems they are redoing some structures. At first glance the size of both mobupdatecode (9F40) and playerposcode (F340) are a different size with data in slightly different places. These are not encrypted or anything so GPS functionality should be able to be restored easily. I don't play on test so somebody else can do that work..

[quackrabbit]

Wow, on test you can now press ALT-ENTER to put EQ in windowed mode...

[LordCrush]

Bug or feature ? :p

[Jel321]

hehe LC, it was indeed done on purpose, pretty buggy atm, lots of people crashing to desk when using it.

[Spaz]

Feature, though needs to be worked out.

It works fine for most of the people I know. Seems like lag increases after you pop back to full screen for some people, others get graphics anomolies. Overall, though, it will probably do away with EQW.

[Cryonic]

The only reason EQW was made was because VI/SOE removed the ability to alt-tab out of EQ. I don't care what their reasons were, I only care that now most of the user base will think something is being added rather than returned to the user.

[Jel321]

Getting back to the change on test.... :)

Are these Opcode.h changes that need to be made or is it more involved than that?

[quackrabbit]

More interesting news:

http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/Forum2/HTML/000110.html


Hi folks, just wanted to let everyone know that we are making some huge changes on the Test server today.
The changes being made involve a new character file format, which means every aspect of an EverQuest character could be affected.
I would like to encourage as many people as possible to log on to Test server and check out your characters. Be sure to report any anomalies you find via /petition.

Thanks alot!

[Fatal]

And even more

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/community/dev_view.jsp?id=53400


Old UI, We Hardly Knew Ye
After much faithful service, it's time for us to bid a fond farewell to EverQuest's Classic and Velious user interfaces. In yesterday's Test Server patch, the old interfaces were disabled.

While adding many features to the new interface over the past six months, including the built-in MP3 player, item links, compass, and enhanced /bug reporting tool, we've done the best that we could to keep all three interfaces, at the very least, usable.

However, some of the features that we've been quietly working on over the past weeks have unfortunately forced our hand.

We don't want to spoil all of the upcoming changes at once, however, in yesterday's Test Server update, we released the first run of the new EverQuest windowed mode that's been in the works for quite some time now. (In a game that was originally written for a much earlier version of DirectX, it's a lot more work than many would think.) Soon, it will behave in a manner similar to other applications that support both full-screen and windowed mode and can be toggled back and forth. As a part of this change, the account bans related to the use of third-party EverQuest windowing applications have already been reversed.

In addition, the long-rumored "Bard Box" has also been revealed on the Test Server. For those who are not aware, we've been wanting to add a second Effects window that would hold selected short-duration beneficial effects, most notably many bard songs. Initially, for tuning, the new effects area will allow six additional songs to be placed upon your character.

These updates will remain on the Test Server only until after the new year, as we expect that much additional testing will be required.

We hope you'll be as pleased with these latest changes as we are, and we look forward to bringing you many new features in the coming months.

- The EverQuest Development Team

[baelang]

Originally posted by Fatal
in yesterday's Test Server update, we released the first run of the new EverQuest windowed mode that's been in the works for quite some time now. (In a game that was originally written for a much earlier version of DirectX, it's a lot more work than many would think.) Soon, it will behave in a manner similar to other applications that support both full-screen and windowed mode and can be toggled back and forth. As a part of this change, the account bans related to the use of third-party EverQuest windowing applications have already been reversed.


in other words:
we banned you cause you were able to easily do something that was too much work for us. now that we finally figured out how to do it, we will un-ban you.

[throx]

I don't think it was ever a case of it being "too hard" for Sony to make EQ run in a window. It's just that the original "vision" said that you shouldn't be able to alt-tab out or see anything else while you played (for whatever reasons, right or wrong).

Now that Sony has become a lot more responsive to customer demands (or at least that's the way it seems to me) they've changed the "rules" to say that alt-tabbing is ok. I don't think any of this is from a lack of skill on their part - getting the windowed mode right (without the stupid capture/release mouse hack of eqw) isn't an easy task if the program was written to assume exclusive mode in DirectX. Personally I still don't think they have it right - the mouse should leave the window as you hit the edge.

People were banned because they did something against the rules. Sure, the rule was pretty dumb but that's why they are banned. It's actually pretty decent of Sony to unban them now they've changed the rules - they certainly didn't have to.

[RavenCT]

SOE UNWRAPS NEW UI PLANS

SOE officially announced today that the windowed version of the EQ UI would be made live some time after the New Year.

That's not all however! The new UI changes will also include separate Temporary Effect buff slots for bard songs, heal-over time spells and other short duration effects.

SOE also announced they have reversed all account bans which had been made against EQ Windows users.

--------------------------

Now, how many people who played and got baned for EQW are still going to try it again or are still even playing??

[datadog]

the reason they did not want peeps running EQ in a window is because they had no way to protect the games memory space from folks who would use editors to change how much plat they had in the bank or would edit the item numbers they had in inventory (change a rusty scythe to a primal, etc).

This type of 'cheating' has ruined many games.

Once they found a way to protect your inventory from being changed in this way they probably felt like they could get away with running in a window.

When the new UI came out there was a bug that would potentially allow duping. For example, someone could put an item (even nodrop) into a trade window with me.. and I could pick up that item out of the box without hitting trade.. and it would end up on my cursor.

However if you tried to put this item in your inventory, on the next save it would crash you. Apparently they put some code together that compared your inventory to what was 'saved' on the server. If your inventory didnt match, and there was no legitimate transaction to account for it (trade, loot, quest reward, etc..) it would dump you out to desktop.

Once this was done, they probably felt better about making the game windowable..

Just my thoughts on the subject...

[Tux Racer]

Originally posted by datadog
the reason they did not want peeps running EQ in a window is because they had no way to protect the games memory space from folks who would use editors to change how much plat they had in the bank or would edit the item numbers they had in inventory (change a rusty scythe to a primal, etc).

This type of 'cheating' has ruined many games.

Once they found a way to protect your inventory from being changed in this way they probably felt like they could get away with running in a window.

When the new UI came out there was a bug that would potentially allow duping. For example, someone could put an item (even nodrop) into a trade window with me.. and I could pick up that item out of the box without hitting trade.. and it would end up on my cursor.

However if you tried to put this item in your inventory, on the next save it would crash you. Apparently they put some code together that compared your inventory to what was 'saved' on the server. If your inventory didnt match, and there was no legitimate transaction to account for it (trade, loot, quest reward, etc..) it would dump you out to desktop.

Once this was done, they probably felt better about making the game windowable..

Just my thoughts on the subject...

Well I'm sorry to say that you don't really know what you're talking about. Money has never been clientside, you edit the amount of plat you have on the client with a memory editor and all you are doing is changing the number your client displays, but the amount of money the server says you have (which really counts) does not change. And if you try to change the amount of plat your client has now a days you will be disconnected (they added that about 2 years ago).

All items and character stats had serverside checks added to them about 2 years ago as well. So if you edit the stats of an item, you are just editing what your client displays for the stats, but those stats don't really get changed.

Another thing, people have been mem hacking EQ long before they provided a windowed mode and long before EQW came out.

I think they've just come to their senses and realized that they were only blocking legitmate users by disabling the ability to alt-tab or make the game in a window. Because for the entire history of EQ its inability to alt-tab hasn't done diddly shit to block people from mem hacking the game.

[datadog]

I only used money as a possible example.. Obviously i wasnt doing this myself. Just used it to demonstrate bad things that SOE/VI was trying to prevent.

I dont doubt people were mem hacking EQ... I just think that not being able to window or minimize probably made it hard enough that losers like me couldn't do it... Which is my point..

[Wartrack]

hehe, people certainly were memhacking EQ before release even.

In beta 3, fishing code was client side, and with a process patcher I was able to change the item ID of the possible fishing results (fish/sandle/scales/dagger) and after many many attempts settling for an item that sold for 17plat... Reported it, got called by Sony, etc... they moved it server side, end of story.

[Fletch]

Originally posted by RavenCT


Now, how many people who played and got baned for EQW are still going to try it again or are still even playing??

You think SOE just turns the billing on banned accounts back on? Imagine getting banned a year ago and then your next credit card bill comes in with 14.95 to Sony on there.

[Dedpoet]

"Dear Johnny_EQ_Player: Remember that level 60 cleric and 57 warrior you had on that account that we banned 18 months ago when you were using EQW? Well, we have unbanned it. Congratulations. What's that? You have already started 3 new accounts since then and levelled several characters to 65 with 100AA and are in the third tier of our newest expansion? Oh...thanks for playing."

No, I don't have an account that was banned 18 months ago, I haven't even been playing the game that long, but I do think this is pretty funny. People who were banned quite a while ago are suddenly unbanned? I really am curious to know how many accounts this represents and how many of these people really will come back. I could see a few of these accounts getting activated again just to pull gear off to sell or give to other characters.