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Private What's changed in the last 5 years?

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I coded stuff for retros and had a hotel about 5 years ago. I saw an advert for Habbo and it reminded me about it all.

Now I know enough about coding, I thought it'd be pretty cool to give something back to the forum that helped me out. And I have 2 weeks with nothing to do, so may as well have some fun.

Has anything really changed since I was last involved in retros? I remember a lot of hype about R63 and R63A/R63B. I've logged into Habbo and it all looks sort of similar, and I see people are still using RevCMS. So what's really changed?

Also, wth happened to the retro/habbo community, the busiest retro only has about 200 people online, back in the day the busiest hotel would easily have 1k online.
 
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Also, wth happened to the retro/habbo community, the busiest retro only has about 200 people online, back in the day the busiest hotel would easily have 1k online.

People that used to play growing up + habbo doing a bad job of advertising and managing a community. That affects retr's in a big way too.
 
i didnt do this.
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im donkjam, used to be a big part in this section back in the day about 5-10 year ago, id like to know peoples opinions on how much the scene has changed, is it for the better? do you prefer old school or what it is now\?
 
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im donkjam, used to be a big part in this section back in the day about 5-10 year ago, id like to know peoples opinions on how much the scene has changed, is it for the better? do you prefer old school or what it is now\?
hi senpai.

----------------------

OT: A lot has changed as previously mentioned, and it's only going downhill from there. Have a look over the forums and read a few posts in the main sections - it'll quick-fast catch you up with all the gossip.
 
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As much as I don't like Wesley the whole fiasco with arcturus & "arcturus morningstar" was shocking. Could've just created a competing implementation using the same database instead of stealing someone's code/IP.
 
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As much as I don't like Wesley the whole fiasco with arcturus & "arcturus morningstar" was shocking. Could've just created a competing implementation using the same database instead of stealing someone's code/IP.

People who want to be dicks will always find a way to be one. The easiest thing to do is to just take something you're proud of and mess with that. Meh its been a year and they're still dicking around in the old cold base and not really adding any features.
 
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People who want to be dicks will always find a way to be one. The easiest thing to do is to just take something you're proud of and mess with that. Meh its been a year and they're still dicking around in the old cold base and not really adding any features.

Adding RC4 isn't new? Weird I thought it was. Arcturus Morningstar is also the only emulator thats publically released to have a full sanctions system too, like habbo, thats a new feature.

RC4:


Sanctions:


We're still fixing bugs from things you've implemented wrong in the first place. Like this, which has existed in arc since you did monsterplants, you mixed up the packets and set the packet as z instead of rotation...



The biggest change in the next MS release isn't new features, it's creating a great base swf pack, a catalogue the exact same as habbo, and a default database without extra columns that arent used anymore by old features. It's goal is so users can start a hotel in seconds, just like the old days, instead of having to sit and figure out how basic things in the emulator even work.
 
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im donkjam, used to be a big part in this section back in the day about 5-10 year ago, id like to know peoples opinions on how much the scene has changed, is it for the better? do you prefer old school or what it is now\?
Sections not the same without you, I quit when you left, it was heart breaking :(
 
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im donkjam, used to be a big part in this section back in the day about 5-10 year ago, id like to know peoples opinions on how much the scene has changed, is it for the better? do you prefer old school or what it is now\?

The scene is slightly superior now in several regards, mainly due to the budding communities outside of the forum. For example there is tooling that literally injects itself into the Habbo client, cracks the crypto (HabKit) and logs it for you (Tanji) and does it for every new client so far, not only that but it can create hashes of the Flash code and trash said hashes so you can follow a header across versions till the bytecode for the client changes! Arachis and the people involved with Tanji did an amazing job on Tanji. We have so much tooling to tweak the client it's insane (Harmonic's community efforts are proof that RZ and OS - now defunct were not doing much to build up this part of the community, and that due to that it just stagnated, I got into a heated debate over this many moons ago at least in regards to RaGEZONE). Also due to a top secret Discord we've got the Lingo source code to old habbo, and there has been a lot of thriving work in that space, we know secrets about the Habbo client that only people like Matthew Parlane knew back in 2008, and of course Sulake staff. We've also got a growing collection of old developers and some new ones on said Discord. Amazing what happens when you build up the developer community instead of trash on it.

Not to mention the healthy looking attempts at making a Habbo Client that mimic the original protocols. We have a thread for Dragon on this board, but there's also Nitro which looks really promising. Habbo could compile their code for raw x86 Assembly and we can carry on with custom clients that run any existing emulator on HTML5 for all we care.

If you wish to know about any of what I've mentioned feel free to DM me, do not want to pollute the thread.

As much as I don't like Wesley the whole fiasco with arcturus & "arcturus morningstar" was shocking. Could've just created a competing implementation using the same database instead of stealing someone's code/IP.

I don't think it's a big deal. This is a private server community, reverse engineering is literally the entire premise, anybody who doesn't get that knows where the door is. I find it kind of funny that anybody would assume any software license matters to people in this community considering what it does.

But more importantly, Arcturus is GPL licensed, it is literally within everyone's rights to fork the damn thing, if he doesn't like it, he needs to get over using the wrong software license. I think I even warned him about his license on his development thread. There's a reason I never touch GPL code directly. He needs to grow up and face the music.

People who want to be dicks will always find a way to be one. The easiest thing to do is to just take something you're proud of and mess with that. Meh its been a year and they're still dicking around in the old cold base and not really adding any features.

This coming from the guy whom I literally tried to mend ways with a few times, but you always did and still spew misinformation, so you got mad when I called you out on things. Looking at your code there is literally 0 reason for your nasty attitude my friend. People even warned you of bugs and exploits that are being patched to this day because of sheer incompetence. If you want my advise: humility is key to being a good developer. We all make mistakes, all of us, not because we're bad, but because we're human. Take a life lesson from Joopie on how to be a decent human being. His contributions to the scene far outweigh yours. Literally to this day people use his crypto keys.

Sections not the same without you, I quit when you left, it was heart breaking :(

You could of avoided a lot of trouble if you really did quit when Donkjam did tbh.



As for the actual thread: A lot has changed, I mentioned most of it in response to Donkjam. There's a few other emulators in the works that are interesting. The community has had people who code emulators but absolutely never post a development thread or any releases for a long time, these people think you guys are degenerates and for a reasonable portion they may be right given all the drama that goes on this community (including outside of these mere forums). If you guys ever learn to get along maybe more people would post actual projects that aren't awful.
 
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You could of avoided a lot of trouble if you really did quit when Donkjam did tbh.

if you quit while you were ahead you wouldn't have got locked up for selling e crack to kids
when otaku shutdown a part of me died

Trouble? Locked up? Dunno what you guys think happened to me but at no point was I locked up or arrested lol.
I miss Otaku too and I miss working on Phoenix. I was reading through some of my old threads on here yesterday getting all nostalgic.

I have no regrets though, apart from being too public about who I actually was haha. I'm a full time web developer for a big company now and I have Habbo and those first v1 releases to thank for that. Life is good man and Otaku and Phoenix were an amazing experience to learn from and I made some amazing friends in real life from it too.

I did some poop bag things in the past but so did most people here, we were young and dumb. If you still have ill feelings toward me that's sad but I won't lose sleep over it. I contributed a whole section of my youth to this and even though some people like to blame me for making development stale I'd argue that's not really my fault, those that wanted to develop could have developed, if anything, I brought retros to the mainstream.
 
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But more importantly, Arcturus is GPL licensed, it is literally within everyone's rights to fork the damn thing, if he doesn't like it, he needs to get over using the wrong software license. I think I even warned him about his license on his development thread.
Yep it still is. Up to version 1.9.0. Its perfectly fine to base your work of that version. Its not fine to steal & decompile closed source code. It was just closed as people where threatening to rename it and the contributions slacked off. Anyone who was still interested in contributing would still be able to do so if they had contacted me. I do recognize the effort that people have put into Arcturus while it was open source, and while not every contribution has ended up there I appreciate the willingness from others to actually contribute instead of keyboard warrioring hurr durr arcturus bad brrrt

Inb4 you cannot close so open source code: Yes you can.

This coming from the guy whom I literally tried to mend ways with a few times,
I dont know you, never talked to you outside the forums and your comments have always been negative towards my development thread. Hence why you've been on my ignored list for 5 years. Don't pretend to be a saint and that all your issues with me is my fault. They're your issues.

Looking at your code there is literally 0 reason for your nasty attitude my friend.
Arcturus is badly written and is a collection of bad practices for 3 years of development without any refactoring. I've said it numerous times why you shouldn't base your work on Arcturus and take something else that has been released as open source, like butterfly, and has been properly coded, like butterfly.

No. What you did is take other people's work, and profit to the figure of multiple tens of thousands of dollars.
What you did is scam youth out of their pocket money.
What you did is profit of somebody else's work.

Someone sold that work to him. It was not stolen without permission. There were at the time plenty of alternatives to phoenix. And if you think back then alternatives were lacking you should've picked up the time to work on a free emulator.

inb4 yeah you sold beny your decompiled & rebuildable as3 source so he has the right to release it; We had the agreement that he could not release it / open source it and only use it for his own projects.
 
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Keep the direction of this topic on one accord. No need for any of you to get into the personal thing, its been over 10+ years for some. Most if not all of you are adults well into your 20's and some in their 30s. What happened already happened, there is no changing it.

I'll be editing some of your posts to remove the direct shots at persons. Continue with it and the thread will be closed.
 
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Yep it still is. Up to version 1.9.0. Its perfectly fine to base your work of that version. Its not fine to steal & decompile closed source code. It was just closed as people where threatening to rename it and the contributions slacked off. Anyone who was still interested in contributing would still be able to do so if they had contacted me. I do recognize the effort that people have put into Arcturus while it was open source, and while not every contribution has ended up there I appreciate the willingness from others to actually contribute instead of keyboard warrioring hurr durr arcturus bad brrrt

Inb4 you cannot close so open source code: Yes you can.


I dont know you, never talked to you outside the forums and your comments have always been negative towards my development thread. Hence why you've been on my ignored list for 5 years. Don't pretend to be a saint and that all your issues with me is my fault. They're your issues.


Arcturus is badly written and is a collection of bad practices for 3 years of development without any refactoring. I've said it numerous times why you shouldn't base your work on Arcturus and take something else that has been released as open source, like butterfly, and has been properly coded, like butterfly.



Someone sold that work to him. It was not stolen without permission. There were at the time plenty of alternatives to phoenix. And if you think back then alternatives were lacking you should've picked up the time to work on a free emulator.

inb4 yeah you sold beny your decompiled & rebuildable as3 source so he has the right to release it; We had the agreement that he could not release it / open source it and only use it for his own projects.

You violated the copyrights and license of all the contributions to Arcturus that were licensed under the GPL by making it private though. Without the right legal paperwork you don't own any of their code. You have to literally remove all their commits and code in order to go private, you can't unlicense their commits and you can't base your work off theirs cause even translating GPL code to a new language makes the work GPL'd. I have known software licenses longer than you have coded. Hell, I don't know what your occupation is, but I'm a full time Software Engineer. I know everything that's worth knowing about software licenses because it's cost companies plenty of cash to steal from GPL'd code and I am not about to screw my employer over by including GPL'd code.

We used to have each other on Skype, you must have a bad memory, we spoke a few times, mainly me trying to clarify with you that it's nothing personal, but you spread a lot of misinformation, you still are right this moment about the GPL.

I agree, Arcturus needs major refactoring, but the original team lead of that project wrote most of that awful code and approved of PRs.

As for me pretending to be a saint, no such thing. You argue with every developer on here, when they all agree in unison and we're all wrong? Hell I don't even think it's an issue when I tell someone why their commentary on code is wrong or incorrect, I think it's correct for me to do so instead of allowing misinformation to spread.
 
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Apart from us all growing up, beginning to work and somewhat lose interest in our childhood hobbies. I think the main issue at hand hasn't been the lack of development within the community, it's the lack of features and/or development that's happened on the client of Habbo since 2018. There's hotels which look identical to what's being ran currently on Habbo.com but are two years behind on revisions and to the common person they wouldn't know the difference between the late 2018 client to the current 2020 client.

Apart from the tweaking of performance, creating new developments with new languages which are more common or relate to those who actively develop as a hobby, there really hasn't been a demand or need for active community development since the new flash client beta days. I remember us all puzzling away at the flash client, each working different parts to crack the secretbanner they implemented. Since then, apart from packet reshuffles every revision they publish, there hasn't been any major client changes worth keeping up to date with apart from crafting which isn't a feature deemed worthy for a retro when you can just buy the item rather than crafting it.

I guess some are actively looking out for the new client which Habbo have mentioned, but I imagine due to the staffing team they now have vs what they had they've probably not actually changed any networking behind the client rather it's just built on a new base so they can get people logged in from their desktops. I would love to know the ratio of people that now play Habbo casually from their tablets and/or phones vs logging on to their laptops or desktops.
 
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Apart from us all growing up, beginning to work and somewhat lose interest in our childhood hobbies. I think the main issue at hand hasn't been the lack of development within the community, it's the lack of features and/or development that's happened on the client of Habbo since 2018. There's hotels which look identical to what's being ran currently on Habbo.com but are two years behind on revisions and to the common person they wouldn't know the difference between the late 2018 client to the current 2020 client.

Apart from the tweaking of performance, creating new developments with new languages which are more common or relate to those who actively develop as a hobby, there really hasn't been a demand or need for active community development since the new flash client beta days. I remember us all puzzling away at the flash client, each working different parts to crack the secretbanner they implemented. Since then, apart from packet reshuffles every revision they publish, there hasn't been any major client changes worth keeping up to date with apart from crafting which isn't a feature deemed worthy for a retro when you can just buy the item rather than crafting it.

I guess some are actively looking out for the new client which Habbo have mentioned, but I imagine due to the staffing team they now have vs what they had they've probably not actually changed any networking behind the client rather it's just built on a new base so they can get people logged in from their desktops. I would love to know the ratio of people that now play Habbo casually from their tablets and/or phones vs logging on to their laptops or desktops.

There's an HTML5 client in the works that works 1:1 with existing emulators. The sky will be the limit once it is finished btw. It's showing very good progress from what I've seen. You could literally swap out all the graphics and have a new game entirely. Some developers don't post everything out in the open.

I agree though, can't really see much difference between the clients, but Habbo 2020 (what people call Sulake's 3rd client now that their 2nd one in Flash will come to an end) will come and that will present new challenges for existing emulators if they do a major change to Habbo as we currently know it.
 
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Trouble? Locked up? Dunno what you guys think happened to me but at no point was I locked up or arrested lol.
I miss Otaku too and I miss working on Phoenix. I was reading through some of my old threads on here yesterday getting all nostalgic.

I have no regrets though, apart from being too public about who I actually was haha. I'm a full time web developer for a big company now and I have Habbo and those first v1 releases to thank for that. Life is good man and Otaku and Phoenix were an amazing experience to learn from and I made some amazing friends in real life from it too.

I did some poop bag things in the past but so did most people here, we were young and dumb. If you still have ill feelings toward me that's sad but I won't lose sleep over it. I contributed a whole section of my youth to this and even though some people like to blame me for making development stale I'd argue that's not really my fault, those that wanted to develop could have developed, if anything, I brought retros to the mainstream.

I recognized myself so much in what you wrote and thought I would just give you a shout-out and say it is nice to hear things are going well with you, and that we all grew up in the end. I get real nostalgic myself when my friends are sending me screenshots or stuff from the old days, and while it is tempting to start up with some emu project or continue on bfly, those days are over. I'm a backend developer full-time, so I get to play around with tech enough as it is, and for a better cause. When I think back at the Habbo days, it is mostly how "dumb, wild, and free" we were. I did some nasty things myself back in the days that I am not really proud of, but those were mistakes I also learned from. I got to know all kind of people, everything from people that are stuck in prison and I've lost contact with long time ago to people that I've became IRL friends with for life. And that is an experience I am grateful to have had.

As Shorty says, we all get different interests, our lives changes. The show must go on. I think it is pretty common for htard veterans to quit retros at some point when they got a serious career or something more serious going than a Habbo server. Does anyone even know what Nillus or Meth0d is doing these days?

I've said it numerous times why you shouldn't base your work on Arcturus and take something else that has been released as open source, like butterfly, and has been properly coded, like butterfly.

bfly was not properly coded. It was poorly maintained and much of the focus I had on it while I worked on it was optimizing it and fixing bugs. At the time, I knew pretty much nothing about software design and architecture. I had some ideas, but there were many things I did not know or hadn't been introduced to yet. There are so many code smells/anti-patterns in bfly. God classes, lack of separation of concerns, huge functions, static everywhere, entirely untestable, just to mention a few flaws in the code. The code-base just reeks legacy when I open it now. I am still proud that I made bfly which had such an impact on the retro community, but it does have its flaws. It is regardless no good example of any well-written piece of software.

If you want my advise: humility is key to being a good developer. We all make mistakes, all of us, not because we're bad, but because we're human.

This is what I think is one of the most important things I have learned after having left the retro community. Looking back in time, I recognize that I had some god complex issues myself, and not recognizing my own mistakes was a big part of it. Instead of facing criticism with humility and openness, I just started arguing against instead, hammering on my keyboard lol.



Its not fine to steal & decompile closed source code. It was just closed as people where threatening to rename it and the contributions slacked off.

Following this logic, as a retro developer; how is it ok to reverse-engineer Habbo, which is someone else's property?
 
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bfly was not properly coded. It was poorly maintained and much of the focus I had on it while I worked on it was optimizing it and fixing bugs. At the time, I knew pretty much nothing about software design and architecture. I had some ideas, but there were many things I did not know or hadn't been introduced to yet. There are so many code smells/anti-patterns in bfly. God classes, lack of separation of concerns, huge functions, static everywhere, entirely untestable, just to mention a few flaws in the code. The code-base just reeks legacy when I open it now. I am still proud that I made bfly which had such an impact on the retro community, but it does have its flaws. It is regardless no good example of any well-written piece of software.
100% man. I wish I still had my old sources to look at but I know for a fact that they'll be awful too. I learned a hell of a lot but doing it professionally makes you wake up to so many good practices that I should have got into a long time ago.
It's good to see old names still knocking about here, I checked into the RZ discord but I didn't see a Habbo section and so I couldn't really see anyone I recognised. If anyone wants to chat sometime feel free to add me: Sojobo#2331
 
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