Akilla.Net
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I won't be posting any more updates to VNBoards for this, since I finally got off my ass and mage a page for it.
http://desktop.akilla.net/ac2d/
All future updates will be on there. Ta.
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Yula_the_Mighty
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The way I read the Turbine Term of Service, developing an alternate client is not permitted. I doubt the viewer is allowed either based on this snippet:
Terms of Service posted:
You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any Software, including any proprietary communications protocol used by such Software.
Please keep all discussion about your project off of ACVault unless you have authorization from Turbine.
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Digero
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Yula, then you might want to consider banning discussion of Decal too 
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[LotRO] Digero (Guardian), Digrim (Burglar), Dignite (LM), Azrea (Hunter) - Landroval [AC] Digero, Lyera, Draxxe - Leafcull (Retired) [CoH] Devil's Zealot, Scinta, Izzard - Guardian (Retired) Digero's AC Decal Plugins: http://decal.acasylum.com
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-paradoxlost-
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Yula, in practice that clause applies to commercial entities. What Akilla is doing, and what decal does as well, falls under fair use and is perfectly acceptable.
At least until Pea starts crashing servers again... =D
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Maddy_ACEDL
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Original thread on this from 2003: http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?t=216
And a follow-up thread: http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?t=225
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migrax
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I think an AC alternate client is a good idea for a couple of reasons: one is that it opens that door for hooks to new technology that can't be included with the present ac client, and secondly, maybe Turbine will take a look at this client and either adopt it or get some new ideas from it. Maybe Turbine will actually buy it to either use or modify for their own use. Anyway, I don't see it becoming a problem... maybe Turbine will let them use it on their test servers (as if there really were sucha thing) to test for stability so it doesn't affect live servers. I can't believe anyone would feel threatened because of what "could" happen. The Netherlands "could" be smashed by a humongous quivering cat turd from space, but it isn't likely to happen, especially if it hits earth test 2006.1616.0034 server.
migrax
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Chazcon
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Subject:
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I took a look at the screenshots on the AC2D site, nothing impresses me, it just looks like a work in progress. Nothing that I would trade out the current client for at this point.
Are those old screenies? The text describes a more finished product, and sounds very interesting.
I particularly like the character selection screen which shows a full pic of your characters in the armor/clothing they last logged off with.
And, what about the original idea of a non-grahical interface for bots? Now THAT would be very cool to have, so that you could run a buffbot/tradebot on an old below-spec second computer. It would have to support Decal of course.
Tag to see where this goes.
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Digero
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migrax posted:
especially if it hits earth test 2006.1616.0034 server.
I went there once. There was a bug with gravity -- made it super easy to climb the corporate ladder. Unfortunatley they had to do a rollback just after I made CEO =\
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[LotRO] Digero (Guardian), Digrim (Burglar), Dignite (LM), Azrea (Hunter) - Landroval [AC] Digero, Lyera, Draxxe - Leafcull (Retired) [CoH] Devil's Zealot, Scinta, Izzard - Guardian (Retired) Digero's AC Decal Plugins: http://decal.acasylum.com
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Akilla.Net
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Subject:
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The screenies go from top left oldest to bottom right newest. The page literally sorts everything in the screenies dir by date and displays em like that.
Right now, AC2D doesn't load lightmaps or do terrain blending, so it's fairly ghetto looking. Not to say real AC isn't ghetto looking either, but AC2D looks even more ghetto right now. I'm working on it.  The next step is to try to get some decent-looking lighting in. With any luck, if I decode the particle system, I could actually have it calculate colored lighting from the various particle effects - flames actually casting orange light. With more work, stuff could even cast shadows. 
What you couldn't tell by looking at it is that I could go out and hunt with it if I wanted to (as a mage only, melee isn't working right yet). My priorities in the beginning of the project centered more around getting the netcode working well, so up until recently, the netcode was far more advanced than the graphics would lead one to believe.
The graphics are now up to about the same place the netcode is. The client loads everything important and parses it properly, it just doesn't load the pretty things like lightmaps, so it still looks fairly ugly.
In other words, no, it's nowhere near usable by the public, and will likely be a long time, if ever, before it IS working to a capacity that I'd feel safe releasing it to the public. I'll keep posting updates to the page as I get more working, along with updated screenies. I'll also keep releasing terrain viewers as I get more features built in, like lighting/shadows/blending/etc. Turbine, so far, has been far more supportive than I could ever hope for, and I try to repay that by being as respectful as I can of their servers/game. Releasing a client that's anything less than PERFECT is just not something I'm going to do.
Until that time comes, enjoy AC2D for what I release it as - a terrain viewer. I've personally spent hours just flying around the world and the dungeons checking stuff out. I may even build in one of the public world databases to it to add portals/names/etc. at some point. It's an open project, have fun with it. It's stupidly fun just flying around and playing with the hundreds of dungeons and all the locations in the world. At this point, AFAIK, the client is capable of displaying every single object in the world. If you find something missing from somewhere you know to exist, lemme know and I'll try to fix it.
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And, what about the original idea of a non-grahical interface for bots? Now THAT would be very cool to have, so that you could run a buffbot/tradebot on an old below-spec second computer. It would have to support Decal of course.
-------------------
If I can get the netcode working fully stably, it's easy to tear out the graphical interface portion and just leave a non-memory-hog client for use. The project will eventually have a plugin system, not decal, but a completely new one, and it'd be pretty simple to turn the graphics on and off to allow for its use as a thin client.
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Drakier
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Decal would never work with AC2D for the simple fact that the memlocs we find every month are related to the acclient.exe file and not the AC2D.exe file.
the memlocs are locations in memory for that particular file that perform certain functions or provide access to certain data structures. ANY alteration of the client changes these locations which is why the memlocs must be re-found each month.
Technically it could be possible for AC2D to provide an alternate interface for the functions and structures so that Decal could be used to connect to it, but in it's current form, it's just not possible.
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Akilla.Net
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In the end, it'd probably be significantly less work to simply write my own plugin interface from scratch that uses my own custom filter classes than it would be to addd a secondary interface for decal.
Not to mention that AC2D is in opengl right now, which would be rather difficult for Decal to handle. ;-)
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migrax
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Does your client run on windows or linux?
migrax
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Akilla.Net
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Windows only, for now, and is run through the turbine launcher.
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Tofino
Title: Pika! Pika!
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I suggest you use the word "ghettoer" in future updates  .
And, this is very neato.
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Tofino
Title: Pika! Pika!
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YOU MUST DEFEAT SHENG LONG TO HAVE A CHANCE
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Akilla.Net
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Yeah I kinda liked that for a connecting screen. I've been alternating between that and a view of sanc for the connecting screen. =)
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Yula_the_Mighty
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Subject:
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Digero posted:
Yula, then you might want to consider banning discussion of Decal too
Big difference between AC2D and Decal. Decal is offically authorized by Turbine and publically blessed by the Manager of Turbine's Online Community Relations. Similarily, Terragen work such as Ganzor stuff is permitted along with plugins for the official client.
Tubine is totally opposed to server emulators, muxs, or any other method that allows you play AC without paying or reducing the amount of payment.
Turbine is against two people paying the same account on two different worlds at the same time. Turbine seems to be incapable of stopping this activity because they are not skilled enough at writing software.
As to getting formal approval from Turbine, I do not see that occurring because that requires effort from Turbine.
By the same token, I doubt they will say anything against it either. Turbine is so weakly funded for AC, that enforcement of any kind is sporadic at best. It is rare for them to ban people for UCM. Get after them for bad language on the global channels. Getting assistance from an Envoy very luck of the draw. They do not enforce against account sales or anything else on Ebay any more.
Finally I am not a moderator on VN so all I can do is say 'Please' so it not like I can really do anything...
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Akilla.Net
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Well, think of it this way then. For the forseeable future, and most likely forever, the only release from AC2D will be a terrain viewer, which is an offline tool. Is that kosher?
Edit: Also, I'm curious where turbine has given decal its "public blessing" any more than they've given AC2D public blessing. On both topics, they've stated that they don't see a need to do anything to change the way things are - I think that's as close to a legal "blessing" as you're really going to get from a company like turbine with 3rd party products like these...?
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--Replex--
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I as well would like to see a public statement made by Turbine directly approving Decal, not indirectly commenting that they will not make changes to the 3rd party scene.
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ElgarL
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Replex is correct Yula, Turbine have never officially sanctioned Decal. They just havn't taken a stand one way or the other. Technically it's in breach of the AC license, but we all know they would rather it exist than be gone.
While we all know their non-official position on it, there is no 'offical'one.
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Maddy_ACEDL
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The closest we got to an official stance was Turbine saying that Decal being broken on patch day wasn't good so they were developing an API that Decal could use.
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