Hi all,
I posted on the CoH reddit, but I'll post this here too.
I've been impressed by the server emulator projects for mxo, warhammer, etc, and I think it's about time we had a proper go at one for CoH. I'm going to start reverse engineering the client, and see how far I can get. I've been programming for about 12 years, my 9-5 is working for a AAA studio, and I have experience in MMO development as well as reverse engineering.
However, I only have a limited amount of time, and I also know how tricky open-source projects can be when people have their own ideas of how something should be implemented, resulting in multiple projects all doing roughly the same thing.
So this is my plan:
I will work to reverse engineer the client, and produce an open-source set of documentation. This documentation won't say what database to use, or how to structure the data, it will just explain the way the client and server interact, the packet structure used by the game, what messages are sent from client to server and vice versa. From this documentation, any talented programmer could go about building a CoH server emulator. If anyone is already doing this (or has made a start in the past), please get in touch, as I would like to join you. If there are any interested reverse engineers out there, please get in touch, we need to pool our skills and knowledge if we ever want to see private CoH servers.
Thanks