Does anyone know if the team here or the other project are working on a PowerPC version (old Macs) of the client? Would love to use these old machines in the garage. Thanks. Tudo
I asked around to find old PPC programmers. No one wants to touch it with a 50 ft poll. So the answer is 'yes we'd like to' but 'no we have no idea.' In theory if you were to find a way to start the client then yes it'd work.
We've made some ground with PPC, and secrets, speedz, haynar, and myself occasionally work on it. But as secrets mentioned none of us are PPC programming experts and finding those who are is tricky nowadays. We basically are stuck at creating an Apple Event to pass parameters to the eqgame client so it will login and run for us. Once that is going, the bulk of the work is done actually. We'll have to make one minor change to the world server, but at that point it should in theory run as well as the other two clients right out of the box. I already wrote support for PPC in our code - it's just not being used atm. So, if anybody knows any PPC developers specifically ones who are versed in Apple Events please send them our way!
I took an old G4 (1.5Ghz) Mac Mini, replaced its hard drive with an IDE SSD (yes they make them) and maxed out its RAM. It runs very fast now. I edited the eqhosts file to point to your server. I got to the 'Checking for self-patch' screen where it timed out. Is it making those requests to your server or is it hard coded to look elsewhere for this self-patch? I'm thinking that instead of trying to modify the SOE code, that you could add a 'helper' program that would intercept all network calls and reroute them to your servers for processing? Tudo
Beware with the SSD that the older PPC OS's do not Support TRIM so the drive will wear much faster than expected.
It's simplier than that. We need to write a helper program to launch the game client for us directly, bypassing the launchpad completely. From there it will basically work like the current OSX client does now, the only difference is we can pass parameters to the Intel client in various ways including at a bash prompt. OSX 10.5.8 the last PPC OS, unfortunately does not support that (support was added in 10.6, if that isn't a kick in the face!) So, it appears we need to use Apple Events.
This is one of those things that we obsess over then stress over. We mess with this in bursts and hit a wall then take a break. This time around Secrets and I got a little further but our stamina just didn't pull through. We will eventually get it.
Also "if" I had the original temp files that the client/launchpad got from the SOE server on startup, I think I could mimic a web based launchpad for if nothing else...to debug the apple events in real time. My issue there is, I do not have my original hard drive that ran EQ. If someone has a ppc that they stopped using once EQ dropped support, AND you are tech savy... One could do a file recovery attempt on the hard drive. This is quite tricky and not 100% sure they even saved on the platter. I have a suspicion they downloaded into ram only. But if you happen to know a thing or 2 about deleted file recovery, chime in as well. I think there are 2 to 4 files that would be needed. 2 .gz files and 1 or 2 xml files
We've been over this We know how to bypass that part. There is a parameter that the LP accepts to bypass the patch. We're stuck at the login screen. That's where the Apple Event would come in.
I know, but it could be used to force the LP into sending that apple event to debug it. It is more of a curiosity than anything.
I have an old PowerBook that i used to run eqmac on however the charger broke for the machine and I am not tech savvy but if there is any easy way for me to get the hard drive out and access the data there should be a copy of eqmac from before the Intel client
Most of the devs have went and got a ppc mac, if they didn't have one already. There is not a lack of computers to use and test with. There is some sort of communication event that we are missing. That is what we need to figure out. Once we do, it should be easy. It could be multiple issues. But we can't even get the connection sequence to start up right.
Count me in if you get to the point of needing Alpha or Beta testers. I have different models to try on. Tudo
Once we get through this patch, I am going to finish up my regen overhaul. After that, I plan on booting up my PPC and see if I can get us any further.
Any know why the game won't run on an Intel copy of Tiger? Was there a min version of OSX back in the day that was recommended?
No idea honestly. I never tried on older than 10.6 on Intel. Tho I "think" I heard mention of a OSX version check in a decompile. I forget what all that involved.
Any ideas why Snow Leopard would be throwing up all these errors? It ran but looks like it had major problems.... Last login: Sun Apr 17 20:06:09 on console /Users/me/Desktop/EverQuestLaunch ; exit; iMac:~ me$ /Users/me/Desktop/EverQuestLaunch ; exit; Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetSurfaceBounds Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged. Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 100 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSCopyWindowProperty Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowProperty Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowBounds Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 100 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetSurfaceBounds: Invalid window 0x64 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 100 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSBindSurface: Invalid window 0x64 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 100 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSBindSurface: Invalid window 0x64 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 100 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSBindSurface: Invalid window 0x64 Sun Apr 17 21:14:31 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: unknown error code: invalid drawable Sun Apr 17 21:15:01 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 100 Sun Apr 17 21:15:01 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSRemoveSurface: Invalid window 0x64 Sun Apr 17 21:18:25 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 108 Sun Apr 17 21:18:25 iMac.local EverQuest[350] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSRemoveSurface: Invalid window 0x6c logout
That would be more of a tech section question, but if I had to guess (as I am not sure right now) It might be something UI related it doesn't like.. No idea offhand. Please make a thread in tech, see if others have similar. Also note if you only see these errors on exit or if you see them while game is launched or during running. It is likely client, and we may not have the ability to fix it if it is not correctable by a UI change.
I have 5 different PowerMac G4 towers, at least 3 have my old HDD still in them. I'm fairly certain that as soon as I got my G5 iMac, I left the PPC Macs exactly as they were, but haven't cranked them up in a few years. Let me know if that could be helpful.
Speedz is looking for the patch files and while I trying a different route, I agree it would be really nice to have them for reference. I am not sure what the names are off hand, but he knows.
The more I look at the client I am starting to think that route might be impossible. I think the patch files downloaded to memory and never touched the hard drives :-/ Not the actual "patcher" files, but the catalog and crc checking files. I forget the names offhand, but I can dig them up. One would need a pretty intense forensic data recovery program to scan the deleted portion of your drives to find them if they actually did land on the drives. offhand it is 2 files both in .gz format Which are compressed files. I have no clue what the contents of them were which is what I am looking for ultimately.
I've been spending most of my EQ time on PPC these past weeks actually, you'll notice from the changelog on patch day that I have been slacking We will get it, it's very important to all of us to preserve the client.
I still have a G3 iMac that I used to raid in NToV when my main computer was down. Only 8MB of VRAM, so it couldn't load any textures. NToV became the land of ice and snow...
