fusionPT is quite old, and somewhat similar to an old version of SGPT (IINM) but that still makes it quite a good, solid release. The 3rd Floor AIO pack is an extension to an existing working setup and somewhat "bleeding edge".
The above treeview illustrates what should be in your server folder, as a bare minimum. Files in Sepia toning may, or may not be replaced with more advanced counter-parts, but are the server admin tools that where originally "shared" with the first leaked server, and are usually left around as everyone is used to seeing them.
They aren't
required for basic server operation, and aren't very reliable methods of administering, but are a common fall back.
"server4096.exe" was
the original server executable, but yours will probably be called something different.
Game client, and it's files
must not be installed in the same directory... however, as part of server installation you are told to
copy a couple of folders from the client folder into the certain places in the server folders. Not doing so doesn't cause connection issues, but leaves the server and client "out of sync" and means you get no NPCs or Monsters in game.
Files found in the unexpanded folders are the major part where differences occur in different repacks. There may, or may not be "name" folders inside each of "Monsters", "NPCs" and "OpenItem" folders containing translations for the servers Korean names for each of those game objects. Otherwise, translation is probably in the main files... which is faster to load, but a pain if you want to re-translate.
The main reasons for failing to connect are
- Wrong IP configured in the client.
Each client configures it's connection IP in a different place.
Many can use IPs from several of the possible locations, but will prioritise them differently if they are not all the same.
- Different port used in server & client.
A client can only connect to a server which is configured (programmed) to listen on the port that that client is programmed to connect to.
- Bad SQL configuration.
If the server cannot connect to it's user account database at all it will just ignore any connection attempts.
It usually only uses ODBC if SQL.dll and Clan.dll are not present, or if your SQL.dll and Clan.dll are programmed to use ODBC connections like Vormavs' recent MySQL versions.
If ODBC is not configured correctly and you have no SQL.dll and Clan.dll then this will happen.
If you have SQL.dll and Clan.dll and they are not re-programmed (binary edited) correctly, this will also happen.
- Incorrect encoding protocol.
Each packet sent by the server or client is "encoded" to make it's content less obvious to packet sniffers. The encoding methods / keys are different in each language version of the official PT servers and clients... most people use the KPT encoding, but some will use Brazilian, Chinese or Japanese. Changing this is not easy for a beginner.
