[Client-Bug][Question] Weird 4330 behaviour(s)

[Akhlis]

Hello CD Devs,

Just like with every-day addicts, I always come to Conquer Online PSDev scene from time to time, and mostly because I have like 1-2 ideas that I want to try out, but always end up dropping it.

So during this "addiction" phase, I took the COPS v6 - Enhanced, and played around with it. But of course I have encountered a few issues that are simply beyond me.

Issue 1: Chat Text field.

Whenever I type in the text field of the client, I get weird (encoding?) characters added.

They usually appear of I go over a certain amount of characters, and the annoying part is that they get sent to the server.

To my knowledge, this client, should be clean/un-edited. What may I be missing?

Issue 2: Clean 4330 Client

I have been looking around for a clean client for 4330, because to be honest 50-60% of the time I'm not sure if its the source/edits I did or the actual client at falut.

For example, the 4330 that I downloaded from ePvP, had an issue with the Market Minimap (Error Window) that I "fixed" by copying streets.jnp into the data folder.

But, am I stupid (most likely!) so does the client I'm using also misses a few UI elements? For example, I don't see the PvP Toggle icon

Issue 3: General Game / Server Knowledge

While my fondest memories are on 5017, I can't remember basic information such as:

Was Labirinth a thing in 4330?

Was Ganoderma/Titan and Experience Potions a thing

And so on.

Is there anywhere where I can check this kind of information? I'm pretty disconnected from the CO development scene, and this is my biggest "friction" right now.

And a final question, how is COPS 6 - Enhanced? While I love to play around with it, and I like how it was structured (easy to understand/modify) is it able to keep 5-10 players online? :D Because right now, after I login 1 character, the game server (MsgServer) goes bye-bye and doesn't answer for further character logins.

[Spirited]

Well, I'm familiar with issue #1: that's absolutely a client issue. It was patched later. Basically, the chat string responsible for showing the message in the client is missing a null terminator. With issue #2, I've never heard of it, but I wouldn't be surprised. This is early early Conquer Online 2.0 we're talking about. And with issue #3, you can always look at the Wayback Machine and see what was supported around that time.

[Akhlis]

@Spirited: So for issue #1, if I understand correctly, the easiest option for me if to update the client version? I have zero ideas on binary editing, and not sure if I wanna go down that rabbit hole :D

[Spirited]

@Spirited: So for issue #1, if I understand correctly, the easiest option for me if to update the client version? I have zero ideas on binary editing, and not sure if I wanna go down that rabbit hole :D

Yeah, for sure. I'm not sure which patch it was fixed in, but I know 5017 doesn't have the issue. You could also try 4351 to see if it has the issue.

[Rezlind]

Hello CD Devs,

Just like with every-day addicts, I always come to Conquer Online PSDev scene from time to time, and mostly because I have like 1-2 ideas that I want to try out, but always end up dropping it.

So during this "addiction" phase, I took the COPS v6 - Enhanced, and played around with it. But of course I have encountered a few issues that are simply beyond me.

Issue 1: Chat Text field.

Whenever I type in the text field of the client, I get weird (encoding?) characters added.

They usually appear of I go over a certain amount of characters, and the annoying part is that they get sent to the server.

To my knowledge, this client, should be clean/un-edited. What may I be missing?

Issue 2: Clean 4330 Client

I have been looking around for a clean client for 4330, because to be honest 50-60% of the time I'm not sure if its the source/edits I did or the actual client at falut.

For example, the 4330 that I downloaded from ePvP, had an issue with the Market Minimap (Error Window) that I "fixed" by copying streets.jnp into the data folder.

But, am I stupid (most likely!) so does the client I'm using also misses a few UI elements? For example, I don't see the PvP Toggle icon

Issue 3: General Game / Server Knowledge

While my fondest memories are on 5017, I can't remember basic information such as:

Was Labirinth a thing in 4330?

Was Ganoderma/Titan and Experience Potions a thing

And so on.

Is there anywhere where I can check this kind of information? I'm pretty disconnected from the CO development scene, and this is my biggest "friction" right now.

And a final question, how is COPS 6 - Enhanced? While I love to play around with it, and I like how it was structured (easy to understand/modify) is it able to keep 5-10 players online? :D Because right now, after I login 1 character, the game server (MsgServer) goes bye-bye and doesn't answer for further character logins.

For issue # 1 - that looks like some kind of issue with the packet structure to be honest. Take another look at the packet and what the packet is suppose to be for clients at that version. Make sure you're using the correct client version. I used this source as the base for our source NotConquer but we upgraded pretty much immediately to 5017 and that did require touching the MsgTalk packet so I can't remember if we ever encountered this issue.

In any case, I would set breakpoints on the MsgTalk packet and see what the actual string receieved server side is. It could be a problem with how your server is parsing the packet.

For issue # 2 - I don't know what PvP toggle button you're talking about, in the version you pointed out as far as I remember there was only the capture button on the bottom right - are you saying that button doesn't open the sub menu? The resulting little subwindow may just have the wrong position set in the gui.ini.

For Issue # 3 -

Try using the /mm {mapId} {x} {y} command to teleport to lab, if the map exists it probably existed on that version. Attached you'll find the map ids.[/img]

In general the Cops v6 enhanced source is an excellent source, you'll learn a lot just by working with it. It has a bit more overhead than other sources in terms of writing the packets etc... But it is clear, and concise.

Let me know if you have any more questions, I'm happy to answer them.

[CptSky]

Issue #1: As mentioned by Spirited, this ia a client-side bug. AFAIK, clients like 4351 were fixed, so it must have been fixed in-between. You may be able to find a client that is fixed and does not have too many packet changes (i.e. 4351 won't be compatible as-is).

Issue #2: I'm not sure what you are referring to, so maybe it was added in later clients. Is it the "PvP" toggle button to hide UI elements? If so, it was definitively added later when the UI became so cluttered that TQ had to add yet another button :P

Issue #3: Labyrinth, Gano, etc. are all part of the 4330 client. Basically, you can see it as the version with 2nd reborn JUST before CPs (lottery, etc) were introduced.

While there might be some bugs (I experimented with this version and never used it live), it should be decent. The original base (COPS v6) was used for my live server back in the days (so yeah, it supported more than 10 players :P). Also, as pointed out by Rezlind, they have been using this Enhanced version without finding major bugs.

[Akhlis]

Thank you everyone for jumping in and helping me out!

For sure I'll be playing around with this further, maybe even go thru a few things I tried/proof-of-concepts I'm working on!

Most definitely having quite some nice time with it, even tho I haven't got around to fixing the client issue (yet).

Most likely I'll be back with more weird interaction I might find.

[Spirited]

Thank you everyone for jumping in and helping me out!

For sure I'll be playing around with this further, maybe even go thru a few things I tried/proof-of-concepts I'm working on!

Most definitely having quite some nice time with it, even tho I haven't got around to fixing the client issue (yet).

Most likely I'll be back with more weird interaction I might find.

Btw, a resource you might find interesting... I have a source that implements different versions of Conquer. It doesn't implement 4330 or 4351, but it implements some near it... and you can compare the branches with each other to see the differences in the patches: https://gitlab.com/spirited/comet/-/compare/4274...4343?from_project_id=8090899&straight=true. Best of luck with whatever patch you decide on (5017 is there as well).

[Akhlis]

Btw, a resource you might find interesting... I have a source that implements different versions of Conquer. It doesn't implement 4330 or 4351, but it implements some near it... and you can compare the branches with each other to see the differences in the patches: https://gitlab.com/spirited/comet/-/compare/4274...4343?from_project_id=8090899&straight=true. Best of luck with whatever patch you decide on (5017 is there as well).

I know this amazing source! I even played around with it!

But thanks for pointing it out for me! Diff view will be quite amazing to see the difference in packet handling for sure!