EQ2Emulator Project - Changes

[John Adams]

I'm known for being long-winded, so here is a short version of what is below for those of you with no attention span.

Changes to Development Cycles:
- *DONE* Dev will be working privately on code, and releasing updates only once they become stable.
- *DONE* There will no longer be nightly code updates for the community.
- We're moving our SVN to a new structure, which will include Server, Content & Tools in one SVN.
- In this restructure, we're dropping ChangeLog.txt to use SVN Logging.

Changes to LoginServer:
- We're switching to an Official EQ2Emulator Test Center model
- Public Login MAY become limited to 5 concurrent connections
--- if we do not get enough participation on the Test Center server, so participate!
- No more automatic DB Updates from eq2emulator.net - using SVN from here out.

Changes to Account Management:
- *DONE* Account Management will now require a forum ID (no more anonymous players/worlds)
- *DONE* Login or World accounts without a forum ID will be deleted.
- *DONE* Orphaned Login, World and Character accounts are being deleted.

Changes to Website:
- Forum cleanup based on community feedback
- *DONE* Changing "anonymous" viewing permissions on various forums (must register to see all forums)
- WIKI refresh


These changes are effective immediately.

[John Adams]

The long version!


I've been the EQ2Emulator project admin for some time now, and all that meant is that LE didn't have time to be "the boss" anymore, and I took it over because of my dedication to the project and team. After doing so, I started having a few ideas of my own on how I think the project would be better served, or run, and below is a list of what is going to change. It's not that LE's model wasn't a good one, he was just more open and "sharey" with everything, whereas I am a bit more of a control freak


Development Changes:

Primarily, development (untested) sources will no longer be available as we go. I apologize for this drastic change, but if you look at the big picture, we have very unstable, untested code going to the public SVN nightly right now. This means, one day everything is working, the next day, nothing is working and we simply lack the C++ resources to tackle big bugs on-the-fly.

Instead, we will develop new server code [privately], and test that code on our new EQ2Emulator Test Center server that I highly recommend every community member make an effort to utilize. Without bugs or feedback from you, the community, no code will ever get released as stable.


SVN is changing! This is huge to our developers, and very important to those of you who use SVN to fetch code. We are combining our C++ (server) and Content (data/scripts) into a single repository so there is a single source to go to for all things EQ2Emulator.

LoginServer Changes:

Public Login, as well as our Minilogin, will have a limit of 5 concurrent connections (that is, a max of 5 players online at one time) in an effort to drive more players to the EQ2Emulator Test Center server. It is absolutely imperative that we have players on OUR server, so we can troubleshoot and fix bugs as fast as possible.

DB Updates that you used to get from starting your world are going to be disabled. Instead, server administrators will need to use the SQL packs that the DB Team releases via the new SVN. This will be covered in detail in another thread.

Account Management Changes:

This is very important:

Every Player or Server Account on record will be deleted if the owner does not have a forum account, starting immediately!

What this means is, if you cannot be bothered to make a forum account and be a part of this community, then you do not get to play on an EQ2Emulator server, nor do you get to run one. This is a drastic change, but it is in an effort to build a more involved community, and to stop random/scripted registrations from anonymous sources to our login server.

If you find your account no longer works, register on the forums and create a new one via the Account Management portal module.

Also on the chopping block are those accounts (both Login and World) that have no characters associated with them.

Website Changes:

All but our General Topic forums will be hidden from non-registered forum visitors. Again, this is to build a registered, involved community.

Per feedback from the community, we will be re-organizing some of our forums and duplicate posts in an effort to make things easier to find.

We need to get people involved in helping us with our WIKI too. While Bolly got it going in the right track, it is probably missing 99% of the information that we have on EQ2Emulator, which could be very helpful to the community. I suggest looking at other WIKI's for other projects, and mimicking some of their designs and concepts, and make ours look as professional as possible.

These changes are effective immediately.

[John Adams]

FYI, I've also re-organized our forum Member groups a little. Instead of having 12 groups for all different aspects of the emulator team, I made 1 group - and anyone on "the team" is a member of Project Members. Access is just easier to manage that way =)

So everyone is a "developer" now. Gratz on the promotions.

[Zcoretri]

FYI, I've also re-organized our forum Member groups a little. Instead of having 12 groups for all different aspects of the emulator team, I made 1 group - and anyone on "the team" is a member of Project Members. Access is just easier to manage that way =)

So everyone is a "developer" now. Gratz on the promotions.

Was gonna report that as a forum bug haha