The Forum

[quote="WHANKING"]Games like this need new servers that pop up every 6-12 month to keep giving its playerbase that Nostalgia trip it desires. Its the same for any MMORPG that has a thriving private server community. Somadev should have stayed as it was. A community driven open source soma development community board. Now its masked by a server that has heavily run its course. LOMCN / RMS / RaGEZONE Are the best examples of how you keep a old game community together whilst keeping development active and drip feeding servers to everyone's nostalgia desire.[/quote]

[quote="CHAOMAG"]Whilst I agree it helped with the development of certain things, I can't agree with you on the new servers every so often. I remember very well the shit show private servers produced. For a start the UC was always around 30-50 never more. I LITERALLY wasted my years on levelling up and getting gear for someone to decide they'd had enough and couldn't be bothered anymore. The super hardcore players would get in-game dominate the server for a few weeks then fuck off, leaving those of us with real life commitments deflated because by the time we got to the point where the high levels were hitting all the slow downs and we were catching up they went to play another game or server. The corruption of these servers was horrible, the amount of chars that appeared from nowhere and tanked gvw stone was unreal. Botting was far more severe on other servers being able to access guild stashes and run at 100mph everywhere. The problem with this server is the fact it wasn't hardcore enough and the guilds were chopped up and took the best players from every guild and made two rival guilds that would dominate the server meaning all the casual/lower level players were in guilds that couldn't defend the onslaught of hardcore pkers, where as in the beginning it seemed EVERY guild had at least 1 or 2 strong players that could assist the casual players. [/quote]

[quote="WHANKING"][quote=]Whilst I agree it helped with the development of certain things, I can't agree with you on the new servers every so often.[/quote] Every MMORPG that is as old as Soma does exactly this and has a high user count. It might not be what you want to hear but its a fact. [/quote]

[quote="CHAOMAG"][quote="WHANKING"][quote=]Whilst I agree it helped with the development of certain things, I can't agree with you on the new servers every so often.[/quote] Every MMORPG that is as old as Soma does exactly this and has a high user count. It might not be what you want to hear but its a fact. [/quote] Name one private server where the User count was higher than 50 after week 4, I played 90% of them so I'm sure I'm right but if you would like to prove me wrong I'm all ears.[/quote]

[quote="GOLDKIM"]No matter how they apply an epochal items and gaming as the Game Master. But if you don't stop the auto-hunting program like the one I posted, Whatever you do, the number of game users will decrease and become their own world.[/quote]

[quote="FOXTRCK"]if you want more, go out and setup your own free website forum and build a community. It’s out there for the taking and always was. [/quote]

[quote="CAPPILIO"]I remember when we had that many servers the player base was to split hence where we are. How many people are realistically still interested in the development? Nothing can be taken from the old anymore in my opinion. it will be around aslong as someone is willing to pay the hosting other than that I think it's a bleak outlook getting any player growth out this game. If it was entirely rebuilt from the ground up had the investment and man power to be launched into an actual game capable of making revenue.... Then maybe... I think anyone with the time, time,money and more importantly industry experience all have moved on!!! bigger fish to fry.[/quote]

[quote="FOXTRCK"]Two years ago, I would have agreed with you on the "rebuilding" the game (client) but it actually isn't needed. The beta client source isn't 'that' far behind what most people are familiar with (Esoma) and it's professionally built and maybe by no more than 2-3 people, probably mostly one guy though. If anyone wants to give working with a game client a go, C++ is pretty advanced and not a good starting point without some background knowledge. Instead, C# Console applications and working on some mini-self-absorbed projects will give you the stepping stones you need to understand enough. (Plenty of using / creating Methods/functions was a key milestone for me). Or, if you're not that way inclined, messing around with a backup copy of the C++ code, I guess. Look at Cchildview.cpp if you want to see how the main game loads and the loops itself. Once you get passed compiling it in a newer version of visual studio (not that hard), then its a lot easier to work with. As for direct x 5 / 7, there's several paths someone can do down to bring it to a newer renderer but again, better to deal with that in bite sized chunks and test out in your own mini apps to replicate the sequential loading of map tiles etc, before going head long into trying to lift-and-shift the current renderer in the game client in one go - but hey someone experienced with C++ might find that easy. Do that and you'll open up better capabilities and who knows what else - obviously to make light work of it, that renderer will need to be able to handle not just animations but current in-game rendered effects like rain and darkening/lightening as well as other light effects. Like with the map maker, the game client has some in built memory limitations to reflect the late 90s / early 2000s (I don't mean lack of 64 bit integers) that could do with being looked into but it's optional, as is dealing with direct x - for the time being. What's clear to me is, in this community and even the pserver scene, no one that I'm aware of is a software developer and if they are, they haven't bothered with Soma. Everything, everyone has ever done is mostly, if not, completely by learning, trial and error and messing around with things. Anyway, as for the SQL database, the table structures are mostly intuitively designed but of course could be improved. By modern standards this could just as well be a MySQL / Cassandra database or something less "weighty" and costly. Sharedmem.exe we actually built our own version - simple enough, a program to hold transacted data that 1p1 references and updates. Sharedmem only periodically updates the SQL database. And finally, 1p1, well Finito did a open source cut down version but I don't believe he ever finished his own version, too many functions to recreate. So everyone still reverse engineers 1p1 to 'tack' things onto it. Gripes like the warehouse space limitation is fixable by the way, we figured out how. It's fair to say that the client and server tools have very little error handling / sanity checks but that just shows you how little the game actually was refined after release - but that's good for people "like us" as it's still simplified as a result. The map editor could be redone and be made easier and easily made more intuitive but.. the tool is really all about world building on a miniscule scale...so has a right to be that way. The point of my post though, is to encourage anyone to try, its totally doable, especially if you have a bit of a passion for something like this. I've been doing my own little pet projects for that reason and some career-related transitional stuff. So, If you still care, setup a forum or something and create that open community, or at least start learning... :-) [/quote]

[quote="FOXTRCK"]Also, if people wanted to get into the art work side of things, there's plenty to expand up on. For e.g. Hwan castle walls, there's only like 3 parts to the walls - meaning there is no other angles to use to create a more "interesting" castle design. You can make new artwork by taking pictures of the images and editing in your preferred graphic editor - stripping out the background and clutter. GIMP / Paint.Net are pretty great for working on this. Then its a case of importing those images into the map maker, into their own .spl file(s) so that they can be used in the map editor (and adjusting the offset so they'll align with other parts of the castle). Loads of stuff people could get handy with, if they wanted. I expanded Hwan castle, the wb miners area and other nice little additions to the map and if I can do that, anyone can - good stuff to get into and pretty therapeutic (especially during lockdown). https://streamable.com/o245th (Ignore the movement tile problems, I never bothered to upload it to an actual soma server) and here I created a cute animated fire... pixel by pixel - really enjoyed it. https://www.veed.io/view/00b60e6b-c27c-4ed0-92d0-bef4ddd64eb5?sharingWidget=true . Have a go, its pretty rewarding. Again, it is there for the taking for those interested in "aspiring" to create stuff.[/quote]

[quote="XI"]Are the server files and client source available from anywhere please? im a software engineer but ive not been back playing soma that long since first playing esoma, never really given it much thought, it would be interesting to see what the source looks like for a bit of fun.[/quote]

[quote="PHARMA"]server files are available but there are still many flaws and bugs /dupes etc that arent fixed in them to really be worth using unless you have someone who can tell you the stuff that needs fixed or someone to pre-fix them. source is also avail but again the original one without any work done to it isnt worth using unless u get 1 thatt has been updated / worked on.[/quote]

[quote="CAPPILIO"]Alot of links on somadev are dead, I got what I collected over time, from the times I have dipped in and out. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U1Gw8DN1zIfSrLtHttVIgj0Dr7PPv5NS If anyone is looking for stuff[/quote]

[quote="TEMEROSO"]We’re all waiting for exodus server it will be fine just wait and see![/quote]

[quote="FOXTRCK"][quote="TEMEROSO"]We’re all waiting for exodus server it will be fine just wait and see![/quote] Now now, let's not derail the thread. This is about giving the momentum to others to do stuff and pass that torch on.[/quote]

[quote="XI"]Thanks, I've taken a copy of these. Are the server files and client source available from anywhere? I don't think I can see them on here[/quote]