First of all greeting to all. I have some questions that is related to experienced Private Server Owners & Developers.

[metebyte]

As I mentioned at the title I'd like to ask some questions to who's already had so many experiences here. Here's a Software Engineer. Worked at some complex projects and now owning my own company which is providing and generating BI related datas to customers. Wanted to mention this cuz I'm not a newbie or asking for a help to build, install or do something. But the thing is when I wanted to take a look to what's going here, I kinda was like questioning my programming skills xD. Since there's this leaked files and its huge custom updates I kinda wonder how stable and worth-promising this thing is. But that's not my question.

First of all I've seen that there are many users who had done really good job and contributed lots of useful things and infos publicly. I'd like to thanks to those guys from here.

1. Is there a possibility implement a new User Interface or modify the current one? If there is that would mean we can add new features and implement those on both server and client side? For example Can I create a new View for the Dungeon Entrance Dialogs?

2. I kinda don't worry about the whole Server Side area. But Client is really frustrating me. Since I didn't have any experience related to productional development with C++. I don't think I won't be able to feel like I'm at home while doing developments on Client Side. How you guys figured out this?

3. I've seen some wrappers, refactors and etc here. But never seen a complete revision of base functionalities. Is there a some way to deep dive into Client files turn it into a development environment? I mean I know we don't have the full source code but you know with some reverse engineering and other ways maybe we can do constant and efficient releases?

Looking forward to hearing from you guys. And wanted to mention I hope I didn't ask the questions that were asked tons of times. Because I was like searching, analyzing and reading codes here for like 3 days and decided to get some information to come up with something. And of course pardon for my bad English grammar xD

 

[MrMentalSensei]

Hey there and once again welcome.

The following replies will be from my point of view:

1. Yes, it's possible to add aforementioned things, but you need to know how cabal handles those on both sides (client/server) and you have to have a good understanding of the packets and assembly language, as well as directx. Without those, your hands will be tied.
But I do have to mention that it's possible to tweak user interface of the existing components by simply using 010editor and ui.dat templates, while tweaking the existing ui.dat file.

2. Those who are able to tweak client side above the basic have knowledge and understanding of assembly, c++ and directx (as a minimum).
Otherwise you are limited to the things that you can accomplish on the client side, excluding the general editing of the existing files and tweaking them, but even so, you will encounter fair amount of limits.
Fun fact with cabal - client and server has to be in sync, so a lot of features (especially something new related to damage or stats or similar) will work only visually, if it is client side only. Don't underestimate server side, it is equally important and hard to understand when it comes to limitations and new features, apart of visual features thay required client only.

3. The issue with this is that you've came to this community too late, and that's a sad reality.
Don't want to repeat myself, but if you don't know the languages - nothing can be done and reverse engineering requires that + a lot of time and effort, but that will lead to the 2nd question - server and client interactions, unless again, it's some visual stuff or some database trigger related things and nothing more, so with packed files the effort might not pay-off.
There are people popping in from time to time like Lex73652 or beta11n that I can think of the most recent ones, but all the other oldschoolers are either just lurking here purely out of nostalgia or fascination on how this game is still kicking (it's not, it's pretty much a zombie, people just don't want to let it die), or they are not here at all and moved on with their lives. The sad reality of this is that there is an extremely limited amount of capable people in the first place and there is an army of leechers who are waiting for any breadcrumbs they can get, so that it later can be sold on discord or Facebook, as sad as it sounds, that's the main key factor that killed any perspective of community work of any kind in cabal.
There are people who continue to work on the files and add features that previously thought to be impossible, but they do it for a specific servers that they have some sort of a contracts with.
This topic could be expanded more with details, but I think it sufficient to give you an idea.


Got to add that mostly you'll be on your own, as distrust is extremely huge in here, dont even want to sugarcoat it, but hopefully that won't demotivate you to the point of dropping cabal.
Also, without the languages mentioned above, you won't move an inch and if you're not familiar with them at all, my suggestions are you either learn it (its not as easy as it sounds), or stick to general editing and explore what you can edit via general means.

 

[beta11n]

> But Client is really frustrating me

I think I see your point. It seems like what usually happens is taking the files from latest cabal, some scraps of ragezone, stealing some "custom content" from other servers, mixing all of that, copying different files until the game doesn't crash, and you end up with something new that is worth opening a new cabal private server... But if you're looking into modifying the game as a structured software developer you might be surprised there's not much knowledge on ragezone or any other forums. Some cabal releases on ragezone are really impressive, and in case of modifying the code you might wonder how those people figured out that exactly these instructions at those addresses need to be modified to achieve X. Best I can think of is a lot of trial and error, combined with a lot of educated guesses. That's a precious experience to have, and it's unlikely we'll see all of it shared on RZ. If you want to get full understanding of how different game files work, what they contain, what the game code does, and how to modify it, you'll need to put a lot of time into just research. Or, you can skip all of that, take everything for granted, and get your custom cabal moving forward. From a software developer perspective this is messy, but ends up being very productive

 

[metebyte]

Hey there and once again welcome.

The following replies will be from my point of view:

1. Yes, it's possible to add aforementioned things, but you need to know how cabal handles those on both sides (client/server) and you have to have a good understanding of the packets and assembly language, as well as directx. Without those, your hands will be tied.
But I do have to mention that it's possible to tweak user interface of the existing components by simply using 010editor and ui.dat templates, while tweaking the existing ui.dat file.

2. Those who are able to tweak client side above the basic have knowledge and understanding of assembly, c++ and directx (as a minimum).
Otherwise you are limited to the things that you can accomplish on the client side, excluding the general editing of the existing files and tweaking them, but even so, you will encounter fair amount of limits.
Fun fact with cabal - client and server has to be in sync, so a lot of features (especially something new related to damage or stats or similar) will work only visually, if it is client side only. Don't underestimate server side, it is equally important and hard to understand when it comes to limitations and new features, apart of visual features thay required client only.

3. The issue with this is that you've came to this community too late, and that's a sad reality.
Don't want to repeat myself, but if you don't know the languages - nothing can be done and reverse engineering requires that + a lot of time and effort, but that will lead to the 2nd question - server and client interactions, unless again, it's some visual stuff or some database trigger related things and nothing more, so with packed files the effort might not pay-off.
There are people popping in from time to time like Lex73652 or beta11n that I can think of the most recent ones, but all the other oldschoolers are either just lurking here purely out of nostalgia or fascination on how this game is still kicking (it's not, it's pretty much a zombie, people just don't want to let it die), or they are not here at all and moved on with their lives. The sad reality of this is that there is an extremely limited amount of capable people in the first place and there is an army of leechers who are waiting for any breadcrumbs they can get, so that it later can be sold on discord or Facebook, as sad as it sounds, that's the main key factor that killed any perspective of community work of any kind in cabal.
There are people who continue to work on the files and add features that previously thought to be impossible, but they do it for a specific servers that they have some sort of a contracts with.
This topic could be expanded more with details, but I think it sufficient to give you an idea.


Got to add that mostly you'll be on your own, as distrust is extremely huge in here, dont even want to sugarcoat it, but hopefully that won't demotivate you to the point of dropping cabal.
Also, without the languages mentioned above, you won't move an inch and if you're not familiar with them at all, my suggestions are you either learn it (its not as easy as it sounds), or stick to general editing and explore what you can edit via general means.

Thank you for you and your time for such a detailed answer. And I have to mention that you've really and seriously enlightened me on some of the issues I was concerned. Well to be honest, I feel like I'm looking at a little "You're here!" sign on a map that no roads drawn on it. But still I know the truth that I'm gonna feel more than this xD Anyway again thanks for your answer. I still didn't prepare a dev workspace or touch anything. And I'm glad I wrote here and got these answer. No roadmap but we'll see.

 

[MrMentalSensei]

Thank you for you and your time for such a detailed answer. And I have to mention that you've really and seriously enlightened me on some of the issues I was concerned. Well to be honest, I feel like I'm looking at a little "You're here!" sign on a map that no roads drawn on it. But still I know the truth that I'm gonna feel more than this xD Anyway again thanks for your answer. I still didn't prepare a dev workspace or touch anything. And I'm glad I wrote here and got these answer. No roadmap but we'll see.

All I could say is this - give it a try.
If you've played cabal, got nostalgia for it or even passion, want to make something of your own, then definitely try it. It's easy to set it up, easy to manage and to be fair, without even adding anything new or even without any kind of a knowledge, there is a lot for things that can be done. The whole structure is pretty much self explanatory and there is tons of pointers, guides and variety of other things in this forum too.
You'll realise why there are no servers who are using 100% content (by that I mean fixed/reworked and not left it default so that it would be there), for better or worse, and you'll see that it is a massively time consuming effort, but if you've got creativity, imagination, time and an idea - you can create something unique for sure, without even touching the deeper parts of it aka code itself.

 

[metebyte]

> But Client is really frustrating me

I think I see your point. It seems like what usually happens is taking the files from latest cabal, some scraps of ragezone, stealing some "custom content" from other servers, mixing all of that, copying different files until the game doesn't crash, and you end up with something new that is worth opening a new cabal private server... But if you're looking into modifying the game as a structured software developer you might be surprised there's not much knowledge on ragezone or any other forums. Some cabal releases on ragezone are really impressive, and in case of modifying the code you might wonder how those people figured out that exactly these instructions at those addresses need to be modified to achieve X. Best I can think of is a lot of trial and error, combined with a lot of educated guesses. That's a precious experience to have, and it's unlikely we'll see all of it shared on RZ. If you want to get full understanding of how different game files work, what they contain, what the game code does, and how to modify it, you'll need to put a lot of time into just research. Or, you can skip all of that, take everything for granted, and get your custom cabal moving forward. From a software developer perspective this is messy, but ends up being very productive

First of all sorry for late reply. I actually didn't have time to check here. Yes I completely agree with what you wrote above here. I'm kinda in need of realize what would be the X to achieve. Cuz you know why would I build something that's already working and used here. And about the existing contents as a developer there's no way that I'd prefer to use them which is made/coded out of a convention but as a consumer perspective definitely I'd go for the fast way to achieve something working.

But if you're looking into modifying the game as a structured software developer

Yes that's a sad reality. Actually when I had the info of all these contents are from a leak. I thought there would be a actual source code or something...

All I could say is this - give it a try.
If you've played cabal, got nostalgia for it or even passion, want to make something of your own, then definitely try it. It's easy to set it up, easy to manage and to be fair, without even adding anything new or even without any kind of a knowledge, there is a lot for things that can be done. The whole structure is pretty much self explanatory and there is tons of pointers, guides and variety of other things in this forum too.
You'll realise why there are no servers who are using 100% content (by that I mean fixed/reworked and not left it default so that it would be there), for better or worse, and you'll see that it is a massively time consuming effort, but if you've got creativity, imagination, time and an idea - you can create something unique for sure, without even touching the deeper parts of it aka code itself.

You're right about the 100% content thing. I think I should classify this as like a) content focused updates and b) stability and sustainability focused development. But sooner or later most of the private servers always ending up with the first one. That's why I wanted to hear/read those answers from you guys. I mean I still wonder If the second one worth to make effort, would It gain a re-interaction from the passionate Cabal Online players.