MU Online Client revitalization

[marecznyjo]

Hello guys

MU1 game client is getting older and older. MU Legends is entirely different game concept which does not appeal to old MU Online audience. So it seems that technically, we won't see any significant improvement to MU gameplay.

The server side projects seem to be very active and provide a lot of content for the users. The problem is with the client tho. There is a very limited amount of things that can be done or it's very troublesome to develop - take for example that most custom features on private servers do not have GUI elements. Not to mention huge lags or massive CPU consumption.

There were several project to recreate MU Online client in Unity or Unreal Engine. Most of them were just educational projects, other died naturally because they were developed by one person.

So what I was thinking about is a concept for another MU online client recreation. But this time, as Ragezone community which used to be very strong.

I myself have a software engineering background, but I do not have too much experience in game networking - would be nice if someone experienced would give an input here.

So here is a concept on how I would think we could make this work as a community:

1. An Open Source GitHub repo with moderation.
2. High quality commits will make it to the main branch
3. The client should recreate the functionality of normal MU online client and be compatible with MU online network protocol.
4. No customs in the main branch
5. Same outdated game mechanics

There is plenty of people here who have a lot of assets that could be really helpful (exported MU Online models and animation to FBX), prepared scenes in Unity with 1 to 1 recreation of MU online maps. All this content could be assembled to create the most basic version of revitalized client.

Still a lot of work to do, but with little support I would be able to start things off and then we would see where does it take us.

Is anyone here who could explain basic packet structure and networking principles happening in MU? Which protocol should be used as it seems there is plenty of these.

The client recreation would give private server owners much better control over added features to the game. It would be easy to add any GUI element into the game. Modify anything the client does. Make the game better visually and more optimized. Want to make that stats go over gazillion? No problem. Want to get rid of speed bug? No problem. Want to make the game run in 60 FPS? No problem. Plenty of possibilities, but a lot of work to do before.

[MentaL]

[SmileYzn]

again this? Yes it is a old engine, webzen do not neeed to do anything related. Only release new items/mobs/maps to this crappy game that we love.

Discuss this again do not make any sense, specially if you look at the forum with a thousand of re-makes and versions that not even finished or have a beta released.

Good luck in philosophizing about MU.

[marecznyjo]

There was playable Web Remake advertized here on Ragezone. So I wouldn't say that all projects were failures.

It is doable, but it seems there is not too much interest in such project - it has to stay as philosophy then.

[Cote1X]

@SmileYzn, what're you doing here than? Someone want to make an old-MU better then this crap which is MU-Legend. Thanks God that're teams like X-Team or IGCN, because they're still giving us an small chance to make Old MU like in old times. Maybe these two team are not the best but they work

In my opinion there's no need to re-make whole game-client but just some of things there like loading, login and UI things. For now there's some mods working well like OpenGL32 hooks or something like that. There;s an nice thing in my head to remake textures and models to more "HQ" which can give us alot of fun. This game is so old but no ona try to replace our old characters heads with this one which we can see in creation of character.

Most of servers are looking for hibrid like "gimme client from Season X and i'll make game for Season II" and that's actually right because our "WebZen" and original MU is going too say to customers and players: "give'em some shit".

That's miracle that bunch of peoples (like boards about server files, downloads and editors) want to go with that forward.
In this community there're people which WebZen need to pay for devotion.

Sorry for my English
There's patato

[SmileYzn]

There was playable Web Remake advertized here on Ragezone. So I wouldn't say that all projects were failures.

It is doable, but it seems there is not too much interest in such project - it has to stay as philosophy then.

Try to put this "Playable" version in a live server.

@SmileYzn, what're you doing here than? Someone want to make an old-MU better then this crap which is MU-Legend. Thanks God that're teams like X-Team or IGCN, because they're still giving us an small chance to make Old MU like in old times. Maybe these two team are not the best but they work

In my opinion there's no need to re-make whole game-client but just some of things there like loading, login and UI things. For now there's some mods working well like OpenGL32 hooks or something like that. There;s an nice thing in my head to remake textures and models to more "HQ" which can give us alot of fun. This game is so old but no ona try to replace our old characters heads with this one which we can see in creation of character.

Most of servers are looking for hibrid like "gimme client from Season X and i'll make game for Season II" and that's actually right because our "WebZen" and original MU is going too say to customers and players: "give'em some shit".

That's miracle that bunch of peoples (like boards about server files, downloads and editors) want to go with that forward.
In this community there're people which WebZen need to pay for devotion.

Sorry for my English
There's patato

Did you read first post?
No, i have sure. Again, good luck discussing about this. Remake using old engine? BRO remake what? MU Legend, MU1 and others is a proof of that.

Also REMAKES of IGCN zTeam and others?
I Hope that you have a time to understand what is a remake.

[marecznyjo]

Try to put this "Playable" version in a live server.

It was a playable (hosted with live server population), remade MuOnline client with WebGL. I'm unable to point into the live game now as it was close (probably due to low popularity). But it worked, was entirely playable up to Icarus content and was made from scratch (it was not the standard MuOnline client).

[SmileYzn]

It was a playable (hosted with live server population), remade MuOnline client with WebGL. I'm unable to point into the live game now as it was close (probably due to low popularity). But it worked, was entirely playable up to Icarus content and was made from scratch (it was not the standard MuOnline client).

Let me see: Is open source? not? yeah, do no make any sense :D

[fallenfate]

Yeah, if it isn't fully open to community input, then why bother? We'd just have another closed release adding to the already stale MU community. The game itself also has SO many outdated mechanics and the server DB structure is (usually) a mess, you'd be much better off just making a new game from scratch if you're that passionate about a half-decent hack and slash. Otherwise you'd just end up with another slightly different client overall with a game that has gone stale for years.

Plus most of the community is toxic and will try to leak the files, say your code sucks, say your release sucks and use it anyway, etc etc.

[SmileYzn]

Yeah, if it isn't fully open to community input, then why bother? We'd just have another closed release adding to the already stale MU community. The game itself also has SO many outdated mechanics and the server DB structure is (usually) a mess, you'd be much better off just making a new game from scratch if you're that passionate about a half-decent hack and slash. Otherwise you'd just end up with another slightly different client overall with a game that has gone stale for years.

Plus most of the community is toxic and will try to leak the files, say your code sucks, say your release sucks and use it anyway, etc etc.

That is the point, i hope discussing this will never make any sense in a close release.
Anyway a lot of teams have their files leaked, why a new "MU" engine cant? Also other question is that users need to stop to play the current engine if want to re-write or do a re-make of mu.

[marecznyjo]

Well, the point was to create an Open Source repo. More of a community project.

[fallenfate]

I definitely appreciate the idea and your ideas to do it. But I still feel its flogging a dead horse.

I think a better idea would be to create an open source community MMORPG from scratch. It'll be a similar, difficult journey, but you get to define everything yourself, make actual decent code from the get-go, rather than patching things and trying to make sense of how to link what would be a 'new client' from scratch to preexisting server code. You'd probably get more support for it as well.

[marecznyjo]

Assets creation would be too big of a task to do as a community.

[nevS]

Well, copying the assets into your public repository will probably not work - Webzen could just mail to GitHub (or similar service), and your repository is gone. As you said, recreating assets is also a task which is just too big.
So, the project must be limited to be a plain main.exe replacement, which can use all the existing assets without actually delivering them.
You could offer to be compatible to additional formats, though. So your new stuff can use better formats ;)

I think developing such a client is not so difficult, if you have knowledge of all the data formats. The server contains most of the game logic, so the client does "only" have to do:
1. React on packets coming from server, which could change visible aspects.
2. React on user input by sending packets back to the server and possibly do some animations (e.g. walking).
3. User interface stuff (menus)

Generally, I like the idea that it should be compatible with the mu online network protocol - who would use it without compatible servers out there? And rewriting a server can be very time consuming - time you would need to write the client :) And even if you want to rewrite a server (what I do atm ;)), you can still use this protocol, it's a bit limiting, but mostly not that bad.

IMHO, compatibility to existing stuff and openness are the most important requirements for the success of such a project.

[SmileYzn]

Well, copying the assets into your public repository will probably not work - Webzen could just mail to GitHub (or similar service), and your repository is gone. As you said, recreating assets is also a task which is just too big.
So, the project must be limited to be a plain main.exe replacement, which can use all the existing assets without actually delivering them.
You could offer to be compatible to additional formats, though. So your new stuff can use better formats ;)

I think developing such a client is not so difficult, if you have knowledge of all the data formats. The server contains most of the game logic, so the client does "only" have to do:
1. React on packets coming from server, which could change visible aspects.
2. React on user input by sending packets back to the server and possibly do some animations (e.g. walking).
3. User interface stuff (menus)

Generally, I like the idea that it should be compatible with the mu online network protocol - who would use it without compatible servers out there? And rewriting a server can be very time consuming - time you would need to write the client :) And even if you want to rewrite a server (what I do atm ;)), you can still use this protocol, it's a bit limiting, but mostly not that bad.

IMHO, compatibility to existing stuff and openness are the most important requirements for the success of such a project.

Resuming: A waste of time, again someone know about a open source re-make of MuOnline? That comes to a live community?

Good Luck Discussing this again.

[nevS]

Resuming: A waste of time, again someone know about a open source re-make of MuOnline? That comes to a live community?

Good Luck Discussing this again.

??? I don't understand what you mean.