I took some time to find unknown opcodes the client can possibly sent.
I found a few, for example an opcode sent by the client when he receives a new spawn (player) with an unknown guild id. Normally all guilds and their ids are sent upon zoning, but if a new guild is created meanwhile the client does not know anything about the guild (name etc).

I also found a client command i had forgotten about or never used anyway, the /channel command. Apart from the server side filter command this command enables you to turn off the specific chat channels like gsay,ooc,auction,shout,ooc etc. The client can inform the server that he wants to either turn on/off a channel. I identified the requests from the client, we only need to add the filtering to the server which shouldn't be hard.

~ 240min
= 10020min (167h)

I figured out the checksum stuff, the client sents checksum for a few game specific files, and also each time for some specific actions. That the checksum is over 2000 byte was very confusing, but in reality this is all what they wanted, confuse =). For the specific game client files i added a checksum method server side, if the checksum do not match the player will simply be disconnected.

Basically, this means we have a base line of defence now for easy file hacking.

~ 600min
= 9780min (163h)

I found some interesting opcodes previously unknown, they are the checksum of some specific files (i.e. spdat.eff) that gets transferred to the server. This way it is possible to easily detect modified files, i still have to reverse how the checksum is calculated (its quite huge! over 2000 byte) currently i could only hardcode a "valid" checksum because i know the client has a valid file.

Additionally, i also extended the trigger and traps framework to be able to spawn a random amount of npcs at a specific location (i.e. beetles in necropolis for example).

Finally i've spent alot of time of preparing a video, which is not easy todo because you can die pretty fast from a train triggered from these traps =)

~ 480min
= 9180min (153h)

Since this weekend i was working on finishing the traps and triggers. I gathered over 50 different trigger messages and traps from live, funny that the zone with the most zone specific "roleplay like messages" is the vanilla zone runnyeye. Other messages happend mostly in velious zones, but also very rarely. I added a database based configuration for these triggers. Basically you just can have an existing invisible npc (or create on in the database) and define at what proximity a trigger should happend. A trigger can either be just a message, an AE spell, or a group of spawns at a specific location or all of them together.

The first spawn based trap i added was the one for frozen tower, when you enter the zone just to the left 3 shadowbones will spawn. There are more zones with triggers like this, necropolis and runnyeye comes to my mind, im not aware of any other currently.

I also worked on the spell effects a trap executes, i had issues getting the spell effects visible to the client, after a bit of debugging i found out that the invisible npcs where not sent to the client, and when you want to see a spell effect you supply a caster ID of the mob who casts the spell. If the client doesnt know this id, you will obviously see no effect.

I hope i can make a video this week about triggers, since i will be gone for a short vacation for the rest of the week.

~ 1200min
= 8700min (145h)

The last two days:

I fixed some doors in necropolis and pendulum traps, and added the missing qeynos doors to a delta sql. Then i create a db table for triggers with different attributes and integrated it into the base code. Triggers can now be easily assigned to "hidden" npcs. They can either cast spells, summon X mobs or just print a message. Then i made certain that mobs or players cannot attack triggers.

I also added the 15 different traps for necropolis including their spells and trigger messages. I started with exploring EQ Live again and started gathering all the environment messages i have the location of: chardok, frozenshadows, kael, runneye, westwaste. I checked some other zones i had some info on but they did not have (anymore?) the messages. There are a few kunark/velious zones left i have to check.

~ 780min
= 7500min (125h)

I added environment message and spell support to the triggers. Additionally had to do some modifications to the spell system since it didnt allow clients to be target of AE spells. Furthermore traps should not get on the hatelist of mobs when they are triggered, only the client who activated them should be on the hatelist.

~ 540min
= 6720min (112h)

I worked the last two days on a TriggerEntity framework. Basically it is currently suited for Traps or Messages which will be triggered when a player gets near them. These Entities are invisible mobs but they are actually in the zone. I also added some dev client commands to show these triggers to the client. Currently the only thing which happends is that a message is sent to the players (You triggered...). What also works is that a client can now sense these kind of triggers if they are traps (along with the normal SolA+B traps).
In the next days i will add spell/message support to these and finally need to put my collected data into a database table, i.e. trap ID x, do spell Y when client is near proximity Z and say a specific message. Additionally i need to add a disarm check to these so they dont trigger when a rogue/bard disarmed a trap temporary.

~ 480min
= 6180min (103h)

That was some major research on eqlive the last two days, i got now 13 of the 15 different traps in necropolis, their spells and trigger text. At first i was just doing sense trap every few meters but after a while a thought this is too tedious, therefor i had the idea to just put the traps on the ingame map. Since i already have most of the possible trap locations i only needed to convert this information to the eqlive map format. This is what i got out of it:



However even with this info i triggered a trap more often then not, sense traps is very hard on live now. I started with 1 skill on this rogue and its now at 60, even when i sense traps 3 times before each spot - there is a high chance i miss the trap. These are the reasons for death mostly, also since i need to trigger the trap anyway to know what it does it sometimes means also death. Disarm on some of these traps is a pain, at first i thought its a range issue, but it wasnt, i literally took up 20 tries to disarm some specific traps here even with a skill of 60 disarm traps. Talk about wasted times since these skills are on a cooldown of about 10sec.

Since the chance to find the last 2 traps is less then 10% i will stop here and use a similar effect i see fit, maybe somebody else i bored and will do this, but i have enough of necropolis =).

After that i went velks lab, thankfully there are only 2 different traps here which i found easily using above method.

Finally i went to chardok and found the different traps on the bridges and the text/effects.

There are one or two traps in the frozen tower which doesnt seem to do any damage, which will also be added.

So, this is it - as you can see about 24h went just into researching this stuff without any line of coding done =/.

~ 720min
= 5700min (95h)

Went into necropolis on live, thanks to Neorab who borrowed me his rogue. Identified about half of the 15 different traps, the text they generate, the effect (spell/mob), if they aggro or not... Pretty time consuming since i've died a few times (the rogue is only lvl67...wait now he is lvl66 =/) and the run from PoK to necropolis is about 15min each time.

~ 360min
= 4980min (83h)

I did some research on the entities based traps (invisible mobs that trigger when you are near them). I think i identified most of them now and even have the positions where they are, what i dont have is what each trap does actually do. I need to do some more research on this but some should be pretty clear by now. I should have enough data now to proceed with the development of these kind of traps it will be generic enough that missing traps are just a database entry.

~ 240min
= 4620min (77h)