Game Development: Salem & Haven

[brohammed]

custom clients have kind of ruined a lot of gameplay elements. no offense to you, of course. but nightvision, xray vision, automapper and various other features have made some ingame items and mechanics useless, removed the ability of players to hide behind a tree and ambush someone, etc. granted a lot of these elements were flaws in the client, imo (darkness caused eye strain due to lack of contrast, light sources not powerful enough, due to 2d nature it was hard to interact with things in some areas, mapping was unfinished (couldn't compile region maps together, or mark points of interest, etc). and don't get me started on 800x600 window size.

I agree.

[Potjeh]

because java doesn't need to be open source to be able to hack the client.

A determined programmer will reverse engineer any client.

[sabinati]

yeah but the difference with java is that you don't have to be determined

[Skorm]

and don't get me started on 800x600 window size.

IMO, the most important of all

[Potjeh]

So only some people get client enhancements, like before H&H's client went open source?

[sabinati]

i don't know, the thing with java is that it's not really compiled. wouldn't a client written in a compiled language be pretty hard to reverse engineer? i mean if it was easy wouldn't there be reverse engineered clients of most major mmos?

[ElGato]

i don't know, the thing with java is that it's not really compiled. wouldn't a client written in a compiled language be pretty hard to reverse engineer? i mean if it was easy wouldn't there be reverse engineered clients of most major mmos?

not easy ofc but, still not impossible.

[spectacle]

From the Paradox forum:

The release date was communicated VERY early, around announcement, and as such it's usually more of a projected time than a fixed release date set in stone. It's fairly tricky to lock down a realistic release date in the beginning of a proejct, but you can make a projection. Now that we have a better grasp of what we are aiming for, the "external" relaese date has also been adjusted to match that. We'll be including Salem in our GamesCom press conference and plan to start a first small BETA in September, more info to follow around the time of the press conference.

Beta in September sounds promising, Hopefully they'll have room for many of us h&h players.

[dra6o0n]

Client is definitely java, and may be even open source as haven's. But server for sure will be not java - just like haven's are.

The game's asking to be botted and such...
I'd say Salem should initially focus on fixing vital stuff in the game so its at least less exploitable.
Else your gonna have history repeat itself.

[DatOneGuy]

i don't know, the thing with java is that it's not really compiled. wouldn't a client written in a compiled language be pretty hard to reverse engineer? i mean if it was easy wouldn't there be reverse engineered clients of most major mmos?

Hard, long, but there are forums dedicated to helping people reverse engineer. I've seen many C++ clients reverse engineered as well.

(and most MMOs do have reverse engineered clients, if you look hard enough)