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I've talked about it before I think in the past (not necessarily in these forums), and after almost a year of sitting on my hard drive I've gone back over some code that I used initially just to make it possible to call MajorMUD's internal exp calculation code.



Well, now I'm looking back over it, and thinking that, with enough work, it might be possible to remove Worldgroup from the picture. Before it seemed too daunting, but now it looks like it might be possible-- it's just a matter of time. ;) Anyways, since it's a coding project, I thought I'd show off what I'd done up until now, and maybe it might whet peoples appetites for the possibility of a cheaper platform to run MajorMUD on. ;) Just to be clear-- there's still some technical hurdles to overcome, but generally speaking it looks entirely possible and doable. (FWIW, the code shown in the image DOES work, and the exp calculation returns a valid result.)



http://www.icehouse.net/llt/images/image_wgemu2.png

nice, nice, but don't the authors need to give consent before it's attempted to be ported to other server software, else legal ramifications will result? i mean it seems like the owners and coders *cough* of majormud would have some deal with the owners and coders of WG

nice, nice, but don't the authors need to give consent before it's attempted to be ported to other server software, else legal ramifications will result? i mean it seems like the owners and coders *cough* of majormud would have some deal with the owners and coders of WG

I've spoken with someone at Metropolis, and was told that if someone managed to write a WG emulator that could load and run MajorMUD that they'd sell copies of MajorMUD to them. As far as porting it, I don't need consent for the same reasons that the people who wrote CPS2 emulators (or, a better example, MAME) didn't need the consent of the people who wrote the games or made the hardware. Reverse engineering is totally legal ESPECIALLY (under the DMCA) for purposes of compatibility.

When you get that thing finished, and fine-tuned.. I know you want to have my BBS be the first to endorse it ;) You know I've got to get an Edge...



Stop by some time Locke!

Miles :wordup:

Reverse engineering is totally legal ESPECIALLY (under the DMCA) for purposes of compatibility.



That's only true after you account for some restrictions. For example, you cannot re-use any binary code at all from the original product. This can make programs very difficult to reverse-engineer, since doing so with perfect compatibility often requires decompiling the original program and looking at the assembly.

Reverse engineering is totally legal ESPECIALLY (under the DMCA) for purposes of compatibility.



and what are you making it compatible with ?

your wallet ?



wg already runs on a x86, you're not modifying that.



totally illegal in my opinion ... (if you're planing to sell

it that is)...

totally illegal in my opinion ... (if you're planing to sell

it that is)...



What you fail to recognize is, your opinion isn't the law.



and a good example is lindows (linux/windows hybrid os) it's sold, and yet, it was reverse engineered from windows and linux, and they both run on an x86 box



or better yet, vmware workstation, where you can run multiple OS's at the same time reverse engineered from OS's interaction with hardware

That's only true after you account for some restrictions. For example, you cannot re-use any binary code at all from the original product. This can make programs very difficult to reverse-engineer, since doing so with perfect compatibility often requires decompiling the original program and looking at the assembly.

That's exactly what I'm doing, and that's exactly what reverse engineering is. Seeing how the original works, and duplicating (read: not copying) the needed functionality in my own code.

and what are you making it compatible with ?

your wallet ?

Yeah... :rolleyes:



wg already runs on a x86, you're not modifying that.

MajorMUD runs on Worldgroup-- for purposes of binary compatibility, I have a legal right to reverse engineer Worldgroup to make it (MajorMUD) compatible with my software.



totally illegal in my opinion ... (if you're planing to sell it that is)...

Yeah, selling it will likely be where I'll go with this, if I really pursue it and finish it rather than just screwing around like I had been. As for it being illegal, as someone else said, thankfully your opinion amounts to about zip with regard to this. The law is the law.



Besides, I'll wait until I get prosecuted (and convicted) before I'll believe anything legal-wise anyone has to say in here.

Well, as long as you know what you're doing legally...:) I wasn't trying to discourage you, just make sure you *thoroughly* read up on what's legal regarding reverse-engineering and what isn't. (IIRC, Sony was able to successfully sue some of the old PS1 emulator makers, even though they didn't directly steal any code?)





on another note, I had an idea regarding your project... instead of making your WG emulator be a stand-alone program, have you considering making it be a plug-in for GameSrv?



If you're not familiar with GameSrv (http://www.mannsoft.ca/gamesrv.php), it's a stand-alone door server program. It has a telnet server and rlogin server, and its freeware.



If you could maybe make a plug-in for it (you'd have to talk to the author... I think GameSrv is written in delphi as well, but i'm not 100% sure), this would save you a lot of time since you wouldn't have to write your own telnet server, account creation/login system, etc. Plus, GameSrv is already in use by a lot of people (former sysops + bbs users) so it already has an established user base.



If your emulator ran on gamesrv, it'd basically be an awesome platform that could seemlessly run WorldGroup games AND all standard 16bit and 32bit doors :)



As for HOW to do this... maybe gamesrv's author could add a toggleable option on the door config screen which says "use WG emulator", and when using that, it could just route I/O to/from your program via Windows IPC calls. So your emulator would still be running as a separate process, but it wouldn't need its own telnet server. I'm guessing there isn't a way to integrate it better since WG uses callbacks and all.