Spirited

Yes, but you need to run the client from ConquerLoader.exe and not Play.exe. ConquerLoader.exe is a code injector. The purpose of the injector is to inject code that will redirect the client to connect to another IP address (instead of the official servers). When it does that, it'll read the contents of that LoaderSet.ini file.

Well that's interesting. Which client did you download where it didn't have that file? You can download the launcher separately here: https://mega.nz/file/dU5GCbJY#gGpIZaiGCX_EN1XzRTE0xVnIx0KoX5J9wwluFgY_LbE I downloaded 5065, the one you suggested, I'll try to download this louncher, Do you have any tips to change the server.dat? after change I always get the message "failed to open the server.dat" Thaaanks That's not something I've looked into, but a member did post a tutorial about that: You can give it a try, but it does require knowledge in reverse engineering and assembly. The easiest solution is to just use the launcher.

The Community Hi there! Welcome to our little Conquer Online community! Here's the run down: most private server communities require heavy moderation and vigilance against bad actors, and Conquer Online is no exception. There are a few things you need to know / look out for to protect yourself from scams and theft. Do not purchase server source code. All listings these days are for freely available, leaked, unmaintainable servers. Some even contain backdoors, privacy invasive anti-cheats / data collection, and major security issues / exploits. Do not accept private offers for hired programming. Create a thread and let the community help, then encourage them to post their offer publicly. Do not pay for information. All information should be open-source. Expectations The community and game has aged quite a lot, and both aren't incredibly active anymore. We still have fantastic developers in the community working on new servers and projects, but open-source projects have slowed down quite considerably. That said, most projects are semi-complete! Starting up a Conquer Online server isn't as easy as starting a Minecraft server, so expect to Google a few new terms and programs. You may need to learn a bit of programming to fix bugs and program NPCs. Luckily, you can learn programming on the fly using a plethora of online tutorials, and you really only need to know introductory programming to get started. When looking for open-source server projects, you'll often see "mostly complete" or "base"/"skeleton". A base / skeleton project is made to login to the client but provide little else, instead promoting a framework for making a server from scratch. Getting Started The number one question I get in the community is: how can I get started? The first thing I recommend is that you read through all pinned threads in the section. You'll learn a lot regarding how to setup the client, available open-source server projects and their features, and tooling around Conquer Online development (like the Wiki). A lot of projects will require some knowledge around networking and programming, so here's a list of topics you can read up on: How the internet works How to set up port forwarding (What is Port Forwarding) Learn how to program (C# / C++ / C++ Qt) What is Git? How do I use it? Before learning a programming language, find an open-source project you want to work on and see which programming language it uses. Most in the community are written in C#, but some are written in C++ using open-source Qt. Git is also very helpful to know so you can clone and fork open-source projects. Forking a project will allow you to develop on it and, optionally, contribute back up to the upstream project. Git is also super helpful in tracking changes made to your server! Here are some starting resources for finding a project and client: How can I get help? If you ever have a question for the community, simply ask! We're all here to help, but please avoid directly messaging a member (that prevents others from contributing to answers or looking up a question they might also need the answer for). It's good to read up on the section rules to understand how to best ask a question and what topics are banned from the section: Don't be afraid to ask a question though. Even if you get a warning, you'll always get a helpful message explaining why and what you should do differently. What's important is that you remember that Conquer Online private servers are a hobby more than a career, and that we're all here to help one another and get stronger together. We're here to have fun! How do I host a private server? Hosting a private server with low latency can be expensive. It's great to start at home on your own computer or a spare laptop! A cheap hosting option may also be to buy an old Dell Optiplex for super cheap on eBay or other sites. Some decade+ old systems sell for $20 but run servers just fine. A more expensive option is to rent space in the cloud with a VPS (virtual private server). They're machines hosted for you, but finding a VPS running Windows is tricky and more expensive. They usually come in two flavors: shared (where resources like your CPU, RAM, and I/O are shared with other people) and dedicated (where you have dedicated resources). Sharing can be a problem if you have noisy neighbors who hog resources, but they also are much cheaper options. If you're looking for a recommendation, OVH is a good value to performance option.

Well that's interesting. Which client did you download where it didn't have that file? You can download the launcher separately here: https://mega.nz/file/dU5GCbJY#gGpIZaiGCX_EN1XzRTE0xVnIx0KoX5J9wwluFgY_LbE

Yep. Just to add to what Rezlind said, that's more or less what I'm doing with my server as well. I develop on version 5615, but I don't plan to use a lot of the modern features. It's more or less just for stability and access to various new skills, items, bosses, and effects. If you want to disable a class the easy way (until you replace the Flash character creation screen), you can have the MsgRegister packet return an error like what I did here in Comet: https://gitlab.com/spirited/comet/-/blob/5187/src/Comet.Game/Packets/MsgRegister.cs#L80

You can find instructions for configuring and starting up the client here:

Huh, it sounds to me like you want something like version 5065. Dealing with Flash is sorta a pain in the ass though, and the game client uses flash for the watercolor login theme in patches 5032+. You can try working with patches around 5017. It should be the least painful option that has everything you want. I think I need to update my server downloads thread as well... it's missing a lot that never got moved over to Cooldown. Here are a few you can try out: https://gitlab.com/conquer-online/servers/cops-v6-emulator (Patch 5016) https://gitlab.com/conquer-online/servers/cops-v6-emulator-enhanced-edition (Patch 4330) And in terms of learning, don't be afraid to take it slow and ask questions. And don't beat yourself up if you don't get something right away. The first month or two is the hardest with learning how to program in another language.

Hey Harris! I think I might make an announcement for the section that answers a lot of your questions. Firstly, I'm really happy to see a new face in the community excited about private servers. Unfortunately, these types of threads asking for help usually lead to a lot of abuse. There're a lot of people I try to keep out of this community who will try and sell you leaked / freely available source code, or servers with backdoors. Please be very careful when navigating private conversations (encourage members to post publicly to this thread if you're unsure). That said, our community has members willing to help you out, but we need a lot more information first. Like what servers you've tried out or at least what patch you want to run a server for. Server development for Conquer Online sorta died off long ago, so the good servers run on older patches, just fyi. But if you give us an idea of what you're looking for, then maybe we can guide you in the right direction. Asking for people to do the work for you is a bit frowned upon. I might need to do a better job setting expectations for new members of the section - Servers will require programming and some work, and that time is very valuable to most programmers (it's a lot of work). I also don't want to encourage members in our community to just ask for private help (public information on how people can help themselves is a lot more valuable). But anyways, let us know what you're looking for and how we can best help you.

Really cool work you're doing here. I really hope your continued work here enables more people to get into 3D modeling for Conquer Online.

Yep, that's a race condition alright! It sounds like you might need to partition your AI threads a bit better. I'm not sure how you're splitting up your threads right now, but you might want to partition them by map or something like that. That way, only one AI thread is running per map. Though, if players and monsters can also attack at the same time, that might also be bad. I wrote an article about multi-threaded game servers here if you're interested in a few solutions / ideas: https://spirited.io/multi-threaded-game-server-design/.

Yep. As much as people are pretty quiet here, we're all passionate about what we do and ready to help. I also try to be expedient about moderation, so if you ever have a problem with the forum, just let me know.

Hm... I don't think it'd be much effort to place the line back in and put a breakpoint there, but it's your project. I'd want to understand why that line was a problem since it could very well come up anywhere else in the project using that function.

The text line did that? Huh... that seems really odd. Not to say it's not possible, I don't know what that Text function does off the top of my head (if it tries to do something weird with text wrapping maybe). But it does seem really unlikely. I'd maybe keep a performance profiler running on your server for a while to see if it's really been resolved or not. Sometimes "fixes" like that can be red herrings.

You can try running the server from Visual Studio and running it with a performance profiler. See if the NPC (for whatever reason) causes memory usage to spike. Sounds like you're legit running out of memory or hitting the x86 memory cap. But still, I'd be shocked if that was happening.

Nice! Glad you figured it out. Where did you download the older version of flash that worked?

To be honest with you, I haven't tried running the Conquer Online game client since January of this year. I haven't even tried running the client with the flash fix yet, either. I think after July, Windows 10 pushed out an update to remove flash. I don't know what that looks like for new installs vs. existing installs, but that could be the cause? Have you tried running the hook as admin?

Well, you're modifying the DDS texture file the way I used to a decade ago. Unfortunately, I don't know of a better way. I don't think there's been any public tooling for C3 editing. You could try the Blender plugin for C3 Tachyon is working on: You can also try contributing to his open source project if you find a problem. I can't say I remember all of the steps for adding garments.

Most people just re-skin existing garments or import them from the modern client. They don't really make new garments from scratch (because that would require modifying / creating a new C3 model).

Lol, I'm going to move this to the tutorials section. Oh man, this caught me off-guard. Good job.

Updates on... what exactly?

My friends were actually going to work on New World, but they got moved over to work to Lost Ark during the hiring process. They told me they got moved, I just forgot. So it sounds like they're trying to bulk up the team. Hiring talent for AAA game development is really difficult, though. Unless you're willing to train people up (which we frequently have to do since high availability game microservices is so specific), then you're going to have a hard time finding senior developers to own systems. Since they're new to games, they need to get seniors from the industry... and if they lost anyone during that development time on top of that, then that's expertise of not just the current system but the system since the beginning lost. A lot of developers who can do the work also don't want to work for the game industry, which is added difficulty for hiring... especially if you want a diverse team. It's a rough industry to be in and hire for.

I got confused, they work on Lost Ark. From what they told me, the development feels a lot like a startup in that it's focused work. Luckily, hours have been really good. They compared the culture to where I work currently, but we'll have to see how it's like once they get closer to a release date. The game industry is sorta known for getting bad around releases - I've experienced that first hand as well.

No, but I know a few people working on it. I can't say I'm really into MMORPGs anymore. I play Guild Wars 2 on my two charr, but that's about it. I tried Black Desert, but it was meh. I haven't really thought about trying New World or Final Fantasy Online since they both cost money. Do you have to purchase the game to play in the open beta?

Hey Flake! To answer your question about the two values 36 and 28, those are both lengths. Starting with patch 5018, a packet footer was added to each packet (the string "TQClient" or "TQServer" to indicate where the packet originated from). For whatever reason, TQ decided to not include the length of the string in the total length of the packet (the unsigned short at offset 0). So if the actual packet length is 36 bytes with the footer included, the length written at offset 0 would be 28 (36 - the length of the string). In Comet, this is handled implicitly (meaning you don't have to set both lengths). WorldConquer's 5187 patch predates Comet's 5187 branch, which is why there's the disparity. In terms of different packet system techniques, I prefer using a Strategy pattern. That's where you have declared virtual methods in the base class that get defined in the parent class and executed by some execution engine (the packet processor in Comet). To me, this simplifies the operations of the server and provides better readability and organization. It's really all that binary protocols boil down to: decode, encode, and execute.

I can't say I've worked on many public sources. I started writing my own after my first two years in the community. I wouldn't be surprised though, it'd be too confusing to reuse the same packet class. But yeah, the core offsets you need to get right to at least see a shadow is the X, Y coordinates and the packet length.