SEQ For Windows?

[Captain]

I am sure this has been asked a billion times and I did look but I must have missed it.

Is there a SEQ for windows that would be undetectable by SoE?

[TDES]

I am sure this has been asked a billion times and I did look but I must have missed it.

where did you look? it certainly wasn't in these forums or the FAQ ...

[Dedpoet]

http://www.macsrule.com/~seqfaq/seq-faq.html#1.7

[Iam_Walrus]

I highly recommend deleting your post by doing the following:

Click the edit button on your post
Look for the checkbox at the top that is labelled "Delete post?"
Check that box
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[AlphaBeta]

Looks like a good question

just wrong forum you might try the RRRRRR forum.

[Trollflamebait]

They dont want to make a version of SEQ for windows as it would make it to simple for Joe script kiddie to run and then that would bring the wrath of SOE down on the program and they would make a strong attempt to kill it like they did with macroquest.


Then again it isn't working now either and I think SOE is making an attempt to kill it off.

[SlowNLazy]

Originally posted by Trollflamebait
I think

You shouldn't do that...

It's quite the debate on whether SoE is actively trying to kill off SEQ but I think those in the know do know that it isnt true, well not entirely...

It's very well possible that the changes they have been doing, though have manage to "break" SEQ, were nothing more than changes (Id say improvements but that another can of worms) in order to support the latest features...

Now, had you been reading the rest of the forums, you would have been aware that there is other development with far more implications to the future of gaming... The idea of simply being able to read data undetected between rings of the OS is quite a unique find and undermines any notion of being able to safely run a game while preventing cheating. If it(being the sniff between rings) pans out, there will be no way for a game(ie application) to know when it's data is being snooped... Which at that point the it's just trival of figuring out "where" the important data, a task in itself :P

Does make me wonder.. What's next? Completely eliminating the client side of our currently equation? Playing on what amounts to a terminal session and all we "see" on the client end is screenshots? How would future online games deal with the fact that any data sent to the client is "unsafe"? Dont get me wrong the info has always been there, but at a time when millions of dollars are at stake, game companies can no longer afford to allow an investment to be tarnished with notions of cheaters/hackers..

One direction I'd like to see an expert look into is what data is being passed between SoE and the PS2 platform? Is it possible that by using locked boxes like a PS2 for simply generating graphics(thus no game mechanics processing required) layed the direction for the future of all online games? Its a bit forward of me to make this presumption, but has the due diligence of SEQ killed the PC as a platform for future online games?

Anyways .. enough ramblings ... Just think about it

[Raistlin]

First off, I agree with SlowNLazy, don't think. If you can't use the search window and put the word "windows" in there, or do a find on page in your browser while viewing the FAQ you really arn't going to make a good name for yourself on this board...follow the GREAT advice of Walrus and throw in the towel, kill off this ID, follow the Lurking FAQ written just above this post (at the top, I believe stickied) and do everything you can to distance yourself from the ID you just posted that utterly board ignorant question with. You might even consider creating yourself a second account only to come up with a good flame and flame the hell out of yourself just to distance the "intelligent" id on this board from the "moron" id on the board...just to fill you in, if I posted a poll about "what is the single question that most belongs on this board. (R^6)" i'd say you're question runs a very close second to "Does SEQ Work?"

SlowNLazy, I'm going to post a board no-no now and ask you to link the running thread/s on the kernel level driver you were referring to...particularly the one where the discovery was made...that would make for some VERY interesting reading. (I'll fully admit i've not tried to search for it yet, so feel free to tell me to do so).

And as a sidenote to the question you end with Slow, no, I don't think that the future of online gaming has gone to the console...not if the online gaming companies know what's best for them. Not everyone owns a PS2, and not everyone feels the need to own a machine that has ABSOLUTELY no functionality outside of games...games that, by and large, are crap. Forcing everyone to pay 250$ for a console only to play everquest (plus the montly fee) is a stupid proposition that would end up costing the game manufacturer money hand over fist. How the gaming companies are going to forstall cheaters in the future? I say they won't. First the trend of non-interfearance has been proliferated through out the gaming industry for years, starting even earlier than doom and still to this day going. Secondly, I believe that where the gaming companies decide interfearance is necessary, they are going to by and large do exactly what Sony is. Cut off the biggest avenues of cheating, go after the stupid cheaters hard and publicly to discourage others, and where and when they can put in enhancements that cause the other cheats to break or not work correctly, and if they happen to catch people in the process, so be it. This is no different to how a government handles crime. It is stupid to expect that a game can be created that can't be hacked to the benifit of a player of that game. Yes, I suppose you could run everything server side, but there is immense cost in doing so, not to mention that speed, functionality, etc are all issues in that respect. I think the way SOE has handled cheating has been pretty close to the perfect senario. There are many people (I would hazard to say a majority) that play EQ that don't even know cheating programs exist, fewer still that could actually run one of these programs, and fewer than that that could do so successfully without being caught. The unfortunate circumstance for the majority of players is that 1 person out of a hundred playing who cheats is probably going to get away with it...not because the game admin doesn't care, but because it's not cost effective to do what it takes to squish that one player. It is my opinion that a certain level of "cheating" is acceptable to a game admin so long as that cheating is controlled.

And I also think that the cost of running things server side to stop cheating costs them more than the cheaters do. It would cost SOE much more than it does to just live with SEQ to re-develop the entirety of EQ, buff up the servers to the point where they could handle 90 - 100K direct connections at once, upgrade their internal network infrastructre and their external network links to the point where that's even a feasable idea and the thousand other small things they'd need to do to handle that kind of thing. The Client/Server network model exists for a reason...and the way of the dumb terminal connected to the huge server array died a while ago (not necessairly died, but went out of popularity) for a good reason.

If SOE truely wanted to screw cheats it wouldn't be overly hard to do...it might take a dedicated team to do it, and it would certainly take alot better/more planning than SOE has demonstrated that it has the ability to do (i.e. I'm not sure SOE could truely plan itself out of a wet paper bag at this point, let alone develop it's game infrastructre to the point where cheating is impossible, or nearly so) but it could be done...at least to the point where SEQ and the other cheat programs i'm awair of do not work.

[GregChant]

Okay.

Seriously.

What the fuck, Raistlin.

Not only are you replying to trolls, you're writing dissertations.

Once again, I'm forced to go, "TL;DR"

[casey]

tl;dr

really.....

[orenwolf]

Heh, you're forgetting two things. One, Consoles aren't just for games anymore (I use my PS2 as my primary DVD player. I also use software to stream video from my PC to it, so I can use my PC as a PVR. I guarantee you that consoles will become even more multifaceted in the future.

Two, There is a huge market for EQOA/console RPG's. The Barrier of entry is actually less than a PC, if you consider that EQ needs 512MB RAM and at least a Geforce3 to be any good. Sony's sold millions of Network Adaptors in the US, and given that there are only four or five games that even use it at the moment, you can be sure that EQOA will very quickly exceed EQ in subscriptions. Which of course is the point.

(Someone once told me there were more consoles in households than PC's. I personally find that hard to believe, but hey.)

[Raistlin]

Originally posted by orenwolf
Two, There is a huge market for EQOA/console RPG's. The Barrier of entry is actually less than a PC, if you consider that EQ needs 512MB RAM and at least a Geforce3 to be any good. Sony's sold millions of Network Adaptors in the US, and given that there are only four or five games that even use it at the moment, you can be sure that EQOA will very quickly exceed EQ in subscriptions. Which of course is the point.

But seriously, REPLACE PC Gaming? I mean really. The utter inflexability of a game console would preclude ALOT. Seriously, how would Sony live without being able to patch 5 times a week? And what happens when a new expansion comes out? You can only fit so much on a CD/DVD then what? Swap CDs? Bleh....that gets annoying fast.

And back to patching, if you have to patch you have to re-print and everyone has to re-buy. Think of how much you lose if you find a flaw in a major segment (flaw in the code of the battle routine, an exploit of one of the skills, etc.)...you then have two choices, either you force everyone to re-purchase your game or you send a free cd upgrade to everyone which kills your costs. Any other solution and you still have to deal with the exploit/bug.

I don't know, console games are great, don't get me wrong, but if I were to sit down right now and try to develop a game for a group of people to play together collaboratively, there's have to be a pretty DAMN good reason for me to choose a non-PC platform to develop and impliment on.

I won't even go into the interface difficulties you get when you swithc something from 101 keys plus 3 mouse buttons to a couple of thumb control pads and 8 buttons.

Till consoles have keyboards and harddrives I think they lag in flexability to a PC...and when that happens all you really have is a PC without a monitor. Just my opinion of course.

p.s. Read my "book" post again guys, i'm not posting to the troll, i'm replying to a started discussion in this thread.

[orenwolf]

But seriously, REPLACE PC Gaming?

I didn't say that. I said it would exceed EQ PC in subscriptions.

Seriously, how would Sony live without being able to patch 5 times a week?

The do it now. They patch to your memory card. a 3MB space. look at the size of eqgame.exe sometime, and realize they don't need DLL's on a console. 3MB is a ton of space for the executable.

And what happens when a new expansion comes out? You can only fit so much on a CD/DVD then what? Swap CDs?

A DVD holds more content then all the EQPC expansions *combined*. That gives them a ton of space to expand, easily as much as EQPC has.

And back to patching, if you have to patch you have to re-print and everyone has to re-buy.

I think twice in the history of EQPC did they patch *content* without requiring an expansion. Once to fix bard shields, and once for music. all other times, they've updated things like the Dx8 DLL, or the graphics engine. those patches are unnecessary (common hardware), so all you ever have to patch really is the main client executable.

For EQOA, all zone mob data is streamed off the DVD, so you don't need the chr.dat files, as you have in EQPC.

In other words, patching is even *more* lightweight than it is in EQPC.

I won't even go into the interface difficulties you get when you swithc something from 101 keys plus 3 mouse buttons to a couple of thumb control pads and 8 buttons.

you act as if these are unresolved problems. EQOA and PSO both handle this just fine now, as it is.

Till consoles have keyboards and harddrives I think they lag in flexability to a PC...and when that happens all you really have is a PC without a monitor. Just my opinion of course.

Well, I spent $5 and picked up a USB keyboard to use on my ps2. XBOX can do the same thing and has a HD already. PS2 has an expansion port for just this purpose, if it were ever required (much as it is in Final Fantasy XI, a Massively Multiplayer PS2 game.)

I think you should reevaluate your thinking based on today's consoles, rather than whatever you are thinking about now. They *can* take harddrives, they *can* take keyboards. The game interfaces are designed around controllers, which have 14 buttons (in the case of a PS2 controller), in addition to their analog joysticks.

And, perhaps the #1 reason, which my SO put best was: "Unlike a PC, the game "just works". No drivers. Nothing".