Dec 7th Offsets?

[Iforgot]

Todays patch seems to require new offsets again. Hopefully they will be easy to obtain.

[Seaxouri]

Structure appears to have changed... which is not good. Anyone seeing a name offset of 0x74 vs the 0x120 we have had for awhile?

I found zone offset and target offset. Still cannot seem to locate a good spawnlist offset or self offset. Will keep trying. Also I think it's possible the structure changed, which may require a bit more work.

Hopefully I am wrong.

[Seaxouri]

Many changes seem to have occurred. My previous update and one new one are required to read spawns now. Also, many offsets have changed.

I have almost everything working. I think the only things I cannot find yet are the visibility flag and the class value. Everything else seems to work.

I am a bit leary to post my updates, because I realize that the MySEQ2 folks probably visit this site periodically to 'borrow' information. I plan on putting in a scrambler routine that scrambles the INI offsets so that I can post a valid offsets file but it won't make sense without the descrambler routine. When I know that the MySEQ2 folks have gotten their own offsets, I will make the descrambler routine public as well. Of course if the MySEQ2 folks care to *share* their findings with the open source community (just offset info guys, not source), then I will share my findings. I think it's just plain rude that they have no problems pilfering other people's work at finding offsets, but they won't share their own findings with others. MySEQ1 only requires a few offsets to operate, whereas MySEQ2 requires many more. They could easily share a subset of offsets that allow MySEQ1 to work, yet force MySEQ2/3 users to donate for the complete list of offsets.

I also added a bunch of debug modes to the server that will allow us to locate offset changes more rapidly in the future. Hopefully more people can contribute, and maybe bring MySEQ1 back to life.

[purple]

Seaxouri, you may want to attempt to track down Ratt if you're serious about bringing MySeq back to life. He'll be the one to be able to get you access to things at least on these boards, and if MySeq uses the seq sourceforge project, there too.

If you do get a hold of him, can you have him lock down the MySeq News forum so people don't post "omg I don't know offsets" as frontpage news here too?

[Seaxouri]

I will see if I can get ahold of Ratt. Blue already sent me a message indicating I could use you (Purple) as a go between for code drops until (if/when) I got my own developer access.

I am not sure what you mean by locking down the News forum... at least not in the literal sense of what 'locking' means with reference to forums and threads. I would think that offset requests should be posted in the Help area... but that's me. Maybe that is what you mean.. I am not sure.

[purple]

The ShowEQ News forum can only be posted in by people the board thinks are important (which is why the forums call me a "Moderator"). Regular Joe users can't post there. But the MySeq News forum is open to anyone to post, so it gets annoying crap in it, which shows up on the front page. It should just be release announcements and important things. So ideally Ratt would make it only postable by the same people who can post in ShowEQ News and then gives you access to post there.

I could probably cross maintain your cvs, but it might be annoying depending on how much you update it. But I'd be willing to try it and see.

It would be an all around better solution to get added to the sourceforge project. For me, I just posted patches here for maybe 6 months and eventually Zaphod got me developer access to sourceforge. MySeq has been kinda dead here for awhile, so I don't know who you'd need to find to trust you to get developer access. Ratt owns the sourceforge project and controls these boards, so he can get you the access. But I don't think he has time to follow these forums or the communities at all, so I don't know if he'd be willing to just hand out access because you wanted it.

[Seaxouri]

Got ya on the News Forum thing. Makes sense.

Also, I agree with the developer thing. I will probably just try and find some free host space, drop the code out there and link to it from here (attachment size is too limited). Hopefully, eventually, I can get developer access and then people can get the updated source and binaries right from SF.

[Seaxouri]

I just discovered from a friend, who is a donator, that v3 does not have an offsets file! All the more reason to scramble ours. Maybe I will take it one step further and modify the offset loading code to read in a scrambled binary file that only our server can understand. I am very miffed to realize that they can see ours, but we cannot see theirs, and they are taking advantage of us.

[Iforgot]

Yes I agree the MySEQ2 guys are a bunch of asshats. I can't beleive how many people are allowing themselves to be forced into buying the tool in the name of "donations".

Anyway I will help anyway that I can but my programming experience is mostly in VB and VB.NET and a little Javascript and VBScript(ASP). Not much in the way of C or C#. I am good at "figuring out" things though. I am pretty much self taught in languages I do know.

Just let me know if you need any help and what I can do.

Oh and what program do you suggest I use to patch the files with on a windows OS? I tried Patch for Windows 2.5.9 from here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/patch.htm but could not get it to work properly.

IForgot

[Seaxouri]

I would just get Cygwin. When you select packages, you really only need a few things, like cvs and patch. I also recommend getting PuttyCyg, which gives you a nice terminal that was modded to attach to cygwin.

[BlueAdept]

I can drop binaries into the SF section if you want. I do have access to do that.

I have access to the cvs, but I have had trouble with the cvs. I can't get the keys to authenticate. I think it is something with the way I have my network set up and is why I said that Purple might be able to help.

As for the moderation in the MySEQ section, I can't help. You would have to contact Ratt for that.

[DigitalMocking]

I honestly don't get the angst and secrecy. Why put all kinds of work into "hiding" the offsets? What's the point? So you can be the cool kid a little bit longer?

Most of the time the entire offsets are posted on the macroquest boards within 10 minutes of the servers going up anyway, not to mention ravenslair and redguides.

Anyone who can use IDA can nab new offsets in no time and all, and it hardly takes a genious to recognize structure changes.

The only reason I posted this is to maybe point out that its silly to "hate" or "hide" stuff from another project. If they want to do things a different way, why not share information? Its readily available elsewhere anyway. Your efforts are probably better spent elsewhere.

[BlueAdept]

I was thinking the same lines Digital. While I don't like helping the other version of MySEQ, they are just as capable of getting the offsets as anyone else who knows how to do it.

In an open source project, you really can't hide anything since the source is available. Unless you distribute a closed source dll that has the routines, but I think that would be a bad idea. Spending time to hide the offsets just isn't worth it since they aren't that hard to find.

Now if you could get MySEQ to find the offsets automatically, that would be really cool but would probably be pretty hard (impossible?) to implement.

[purple]

There's a bit more backstory than what is obvious though. I can understand the animosity, since MySeq v2 and later was stolen from the GPL version and closed without permission from the original authors.

But there's no way you can hide something easily and still be GPL, and if you pull away from GPL in order to spite the other people, you'd be just as bad as they are. Shipping a closed source dll that goes into your GPLed project is against the GPL I believe. Don't ask me how seq got away with it in the olden days.

Not that I really care about MySeq at all of course. But in my opinion, the best thing you can do is do your damndest to make the GPL version better than the closed version and just ignore them. If they are assholish enough to blantantly steal your GPLed source (again), you're not going to be able to stop them. The best way to hurt them is to make a free MySeq that is easy for people to use so they don't even go there anymore.

[BlueAdept]

There's a bit more backstory than what is obvious though. I can understand the animosity, since MySeq v2 and later was stolen from the GPL version and closed without permission from the original authors.
..snip..
But in my opinion, the best thing you can do is do your damndest to make the GPL version better than the closed version and just ignore them. If they are assholish enough to blantantly steal your GPLed source (again), you're not going to be able to stop them. The best way to hurt them is to make a free MySeq that is easy for people to use so they don't even go there anymore.

Your right about needing to make it better than theirs. Also it needs to be publicized better. Need to knock them off of the top ranking on google for myseq.

I am still pissed that they stole my filters stripped out my name, all references to SEQ and claimed they made them on their own.

[Seaxouri]

I had already resolved to just forget about the offsets thing. It has nothing to do with being 'the cool kid'.. whatever the heck that means. It was more of a reaction to the ongoing perception that they can keep taking, without giving back. Of course noone can stop them from taking, and noone can force them to give back. So my immediate reaction was to make it harder for them to take.

Of course it is extra work, and they will just figure it out anyhow. Basically I wound up just sticking a message in the server indicating that it was GPL software and it was not to be used to aid progression of non-GPL software. Of course they won't care, I am sure, and use it anyhow.

I got it all working. I found the last missing offsets and added four debug modes to aid in finding future offsets. I will check in the code and try and drop the binaries somewhere.. not sure what access I have yet.

Also, fwiw, I made a new Races.txt which has a lot of new races in it. It wasn't hard, but it goes in the client/cfg directory.

[Seaxouri]

New server released. I'll post it in the help forum.

[Ulanbat]

Cant get that server to work, probably just me being noobish though

[Seaxouri]

Post what the server output is.

You cannot use the MySEQ2 or MySEQ3 client.. you need to use the MySEQ1 client, just so you know. You can use version 1.17.0, 1.17.1 or 1.18.0.

Has anyone else had success of failures using it? Feedback appreciated.

[Seaxouri]

Try downloading it again. Something happened with the mirrors and the file got corrupted. I tested it right after I put it up there and it was fine, however, sourceforge is renaming the file extension from .tgz to .gz, which caused problems. Even changing it back to .tgz did not work.

You should see a 'zip' file there now. The zip file works. I tested it from two mirrors now.

[fastcarr]

I couldn't get the new server to work until I installed the .NET 2.0 SDK from Microsoft.

I had the .NET 2.0 Framework already installed but it crashed immediately with an error about application has invalid configuration or something like that. Installing the .NET 2.0 SDK fixed it.

[Ulanbat]

crashed immediately with an error about application has invalid configuration or something like that

exactly what happened

Installing the .NET 2.0 SDK now to test it

EDIT: Worked when .NET 2.0 SDK is installed

[Iforgot]

The issue is that MSVCR80D.dll is missing. I am not sure if this is a redistributable dll and if you could just obtain that file or if you need the whole .NET 2.0. Also the "D" designation means this dll is for debugging purposes. IMO the binary should be recompiled to use MSVCR80.dll instead of MSVCR80D.dll.

NOTE:I just DL'ed the .NET 2.0 framework and did not get the Debug version of this dll. Apparantly it only comes with the SDK...I assume as I have not DL'ed it yet.

[Seaxouri]

Thanks. I fixed it and uploaded v1.18.1. Sorry, when I saw the old one was corrupt, I was at work, so I had to build a new one, and fast. I had forgotten to switch back to release mode, and since, of course, I have the SDK installed, the problem was transparent to me.

Try getting the latest server now. It should be fine... hopefully.

[Seaxouri]

I also uploaded the client in zip form and called it 1.18.1. Can someone verify that works ok as well?

Thanks.

[Iforgot]

Yep that did the trick. Working like a champ. You rock thanks!!