Network data changes

[joojooga]

From reading this thread I would think they're NT too. I'm sorta shocked though, not from a stability standpoint, but from a cost standpoint. You figure they bought the 5 Cal cheapie version of NT, that's still like 499.00 a pop. And if they ever upgraded to 2K, then they're prolly gonna use Microsofts Open "rent-a-licence" scheme. Linux woulda been cheaper.

I've heard that the patcher program is just HTTP over a non-standard port. If that's the case, hope they're not using IIS LOL.

-Joojooga

[throx]

Originally posted by joojooga
From reading this thread I would think they're NT too. I'm sorta shocked though, not from a stability standpoint, but from a cost standpoint. You figure they bought the 5 Cal cheapie version of NT, that's still like 499.00 a pop. And if they ever upgraded to 2K, then they're prolly gonna use Microsofts Open "rent-a-licence" scheme. Linux woulda been cheaper.

I've heard that the patcher program is just HTTP over a non-standard port. If that's the case, hope they're not using IIS LOL.

They have over 1000 machines - they'd be using a Select license, or even have a direct deal with MS. You can't tell how much per box it would be, but the last Select license I worked with was a *lot* cheaper than the "off the shelf" prices.

You also can't compare Linux costs to NT costs just from 'off the shelf' prices. You end up looking at the long term pricing and probably want to add in the cost of telephone support from whoever they buy the Linux distro from (most companies don't do a 1000 machine roll out from an unsupported distro).

The patch servers use Apache. Just try to fetch a page and look at the error message.

[S_B_R]

As I recall, they had some job postings for several Unix Admin postions with "Solaris experience a plus"... that was back around the time of SoL.

[Klandis]

> The patch servers use Apache. Just try to fetch a page and look at the error message.

Server: Mathopd/SOE

"Mathopd is a very small, yet very fast HTTP server for UN*X systems."

[Vertigo1]

1.) We've seen SoE get "shown up" by a mere consumer before... EQW? and their now poorly implemented Windowed EQ mode.

2.) I turn off all the fancy stuff... 640x480... base EQ.. feels like I am back in the pre-kunark days... and my 2.0Ghz Pentium 4 will be at 100% CPU usage.. Granted EQ runs fast as hell at this setting.. it is not the game I like to play..

I've popped out into Windowed mode and opened Task Manager in Windows XP and it is pegged at 100% CPU usage.

I gotta agree with fee here.. The have constantly used regular PAYING customers for beta testing their shit. They have no QA, they have no real code/game testers.. They implement it half assed and release it with enough hype of the second coming..


I wish I knew more of network programming and packet structure to help fee and the devs with this. Thanks for all the work guys, and will be waiting for fixed SEQ in the coming weeks if possible. Good work and keep it up.

[BlueAdept]

You know with the processor pegged at 100% all the time, what good is windowed mode?

I tried to load IE and it just sat there for like 3 minutes loading. To go to web pages, I would click on the link, switch back to the game for a couple minutes and then go back to the page. They arent giving enough time slices to other processes.

Ive ended up putting my old 486 laptop on the network just so I can view web pages faster.

[KaL]

I run my trader 24x7 all the time in windowed mode. I run Winamp, IE, windows Explorer, image viewers, SSH client, etc., while running my trader.

That's on a 1ghz machine, 256mb RAM, 32mb geforce 2 gts.

My main machine, 1.4ghz, 512mb RAM, 64mb Geforce 4 Ti4200, I can run those things while actively playing, not just in trader mode.

Dunno why you have so many problems.

Oh yeah, I'm running XP on both machines.

[wfj5444]

My main is about the same Kal, a bit beefier..

Athlon 2000+ 768MB of Ram, GF4 4400, WinXP... etc

and I have no issues using EQW in 1024X768 with a screen rez of 12X10

/shrug. Could be that I keep my page file on another physical drive or that I keep my machine defragged often.

I am also running Norton AV as well.

[cryptorad]

For you guys saying you have NO problems running in windowed mode.


Are you running EQW?? Or are you running SOE's windowed mode of EQ itself??

[Klandis]

(win98)
I have no problems with applications if I have them running before I start the game. EQ likes to allocate all memory and anything extra started after that enters swap hell for a while.

[sam]

I expect to get flamed, but oh well...

Can we please go back to posting about Network data changes in this "Network data changes" thread? The topic has been off target for a lot of the posts. The reason being, I'm really curious about what new changes the devs find out and I'm not as interested in OS wars and how bad the windowed version sux... lots of other threads/forums to post these in

[Lyenu X`Arie]

I agree with you Sam, and I am very interested in seeing what the devs have found out as well.

[throx]

You know with the processor pegged at 100% all the time, what good is windowed mode?

Yeah, and if I could kill that pesky "System Idle Process" that normally takes all my CPU I'm sure my machine would be like ten times faster.

A game will always use 100% of the CPU because that's the way games are designed. They run an event loop the entire time as fast as they can so that improvements in your machine translate directly to improvements in game performance. Most people would be rather upset if they upgraded their machine to find that they got no improvement in the game's performance, just some more idle time for their system.

If you want better performance from other applications, just go to task manager (assuming you are running XP/2k) and change the scheduling priority of eqgame.exe. Because NT uses a pseudo-realtime scheduler though, I'd not recommend running anything CPU intensive at a higher priority than EQ if you don't want to go LD a lot.

[fester]

Well, I am not a dev, but when I read the post by Protector that created this thread, I thought "well duh".

I knew within 48 hours the transforms made to the majority of the packets. I am QUITE sure the devs did within that time also. There was even a poll on the irc channel of the likes of "spend time to release a working one now or wait until after LoY as they are likely to break it again" (close but not exact quote.)

Most people opted for the "fix it once" model. I personally don't want to spend more time on this than I have to (when a fix is released, I only want to install it once.) I was able to get seq working for much of the packets to which we didn't need another key (did this more as a curiosity, as I had never seen them put effort into breaking GPS before.) The key which is init'd during zone, they know how to derive that without snooping the client (if present during zone) and at least I know how to snoop for it IF I was not not sniffing during a zone (it can be reversed from the packet stream as it is a simple repeating xor).

I think why no one answered this thread (at least why I didnt until now), is that I didnt think it was anything more than a complaint and didn't deserve an answer. Especially since this thread has ALREADY BEEN answered in the form of posts during the first couple of days after it broke.

(Edit: it was early and I corrected some spelling)

[Cryonic]

Actually EQ doesn't keep my CPU pegged to 100% (at least not when run Full-screen). I know this because I run distributed.net in the background and if the CPU was fully busy, then distributed wouldn't get any time from the system to crunch keys. However in windowed mode (non-EQW) it does peg the CPU.