Author Topic: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...  (Read 114072 times)

mrennigma

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #200 on: September 03, 2012, 09:45:51 PM »
Just want to say we're with you as well. CoH was the first MMO that my wife cut her teeth on and I have many MANY fond memories of it as well. For things to have been handled as they have is just reprehensible. The candle may be flickering but the flame hasn't died yet!

Gemfire

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #201 on: September 03, 2012, 10:49:29 PM »
Well i have seen the posts about the money to buy the game outright.. hmmm seems a little out of the range, the best opinon would be to approach to rent the licence as NCSoft will make money for nothing. From a business point of view that makes more sense and would be more viable as probably the cash up front would be minimal. There is also the cost of sub licensing from cryptic as they still own some of the rights. Again an approach would be necessary, but again from a business point of view they would probably be open to suggestions as with the game dead they would earn nothing along with NCSoft.

From what I see there are plenty of people that are willing to continue to pay subscriptions for the game which would i am sure be enough to meet the license agreements that the 2 studios want.

However there is a 3rd option which would be to try and by the game outright.. $10million is a figure i have seen thrown around, with the right business plan even in the climate of today's financial situation there would be i am sure willing backers of the scheme. Although it would need firm figures and an accurate direction of where the game is going to go under private ( Titan ) ownership. of course if the correct backer could be found to maybe plunge a little cash into the venture then i am sure it could succeed. Seeing as COH is allegedly having a better time of it than Champions and DC universe. this would require a firm plan on where the game is going to go and if it would be widely available to all.

Of course they may need to be a streamlining of the servers to reduce costs and maybe development delayed whilst this is all sorted out, but worded correctly in a business plan ( As long as NCSoft are willing to let go ) would surely find a bank or backer with no major issues. After all online gaming is starting to catch up with retail sales of consoles.

Of course this is dependent of a firm leadership in the form of Titan who are already known worldwide ( Not trying to blow your trumpet, but you are ) with a positive and firm action plan on where you want to take the game in the future.

Stratoburst

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #202 on: September 03, 2012, 11:02:36 PM »
However, if you can run a packet sniffer like Wireshark or tcpdump...

Since I've never used a packet sniffer before....

I am more than happy to do this.  Frankly, the wind went out of my sails when I saw that NCSoft had ditched CoH, and I didn't feel like playing.  However, if my playing can help get an emulator and/or future development off the ground, I am eager to play as much as I can. 

The things I need to know are:
  • Do I need to keep a written log of what I am doing and send it along with the packet captures?
  • To where do I send the packet captures?

I will get Wireshark installed tonight or tomorrow.

Many, many thanks for your efforts.

By the way, I do not have experience in game programming.  My experience is in database application programming and database-driven websites.  PM me if you think that might be useful and you want details.

Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #203 on: September 03, 2012, 11:41:09 PM »
1. Just a general overview if you do anything is fine. Something like "Numina TF" or "Base editing session".

2. Nowhere, yet. A blind capture will get all sorts of stuff you may not want anyone else to see. I'm working on a utility to filter it, or you could also apply a wireshark capture filter of "ip.addr >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.addr < 64.25.48.0". Keep your eyes on this spot for what to do with the capture files once we're ready.

padathir

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #204 on: September 04, 2012, 12:19:27 AM »
I take it that IP range is the current servers?

Victoria Victrix

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #205 on: September 04, 2012, 01:27:20 AM »
Hi guys, Mercedes Lackey here.  I did some serious networking at DragonCon...I was literally JUST checked into the con hotel when I was smashed in the face with the news.  I've hooked the one person in my personal circle of acquaintances who may have a glimmer of pulling any kind of save off with the City Of team and pointed him here. 

I'm not going to blow sunshine up anyone's derriere, and I haven't got leave to reveal who I've tapped--and don't let this derail any efforts at coming up with an alternate PLEASE!--but just know we've got people who will do their damndest to save Paragon again.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

eabrace

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #206 on: September 04, 2012, 01:35:08 AM »
Hi guys, Mercedes Lackey here.  I did some serious networking at DragonCon...I was literally JUST checked into the con hotel when I was smashed in the face with the news.  I've hooked the one person in my personal circle of acquaintances who may have a glimmer of pulling any kind of save off with the City Of team and pointed him here. 

I'm not going to blow sunshine up anyone's derriere, and I haven't got leave to reveal who I've tapped--and don't let this derail any efforts at coming up with an alternate PLEASE!--but just know we've got people who will do their damndest to save Paragon again.
And we all appreciate the effort!  :)
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Ampithere

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #207 on: September 04, 2012, 01:48:58 AM »
Count me among the packet sniffers. I had planned on hanging up my cape until I found out more, but as has been said I'll do whatever I can to gather information for this effort to save the game.
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Teege

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #208 on: September 04, 2012, 02:02:10 AM »
I'd also be happy to assist with sniffing, okay so that sounds bad, you get the idea. Also still spreading the word regarding Titan's attempts, the petitions, finding folks willing to donate money should we attain that level. Again if anything does come to fruition I'd be happy to help with writing, database work and those sort of tasks as heavy coding is beyond my level currently. At any rate I love the drive of everybody here and I am proud of you all.
Keep fighting the good fight!

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lunalynx

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #209 on: September 04, 2012, 03:08:01 AM »
Just a note to pledge my support: money (what little I have), time, UNIX/Linux admin skills.

baronmwd

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #210 on: September 04, 2012, 04:57:27 AM »
Just wanted to say it is truly a sight to see our community coming together as it is so far.  I'm so use to reading threads that ALWAYS turns into some flame war between posters.  It really is a heroic thing for us all to come together for the same cause and to fight for something that is so important to so many.  I don't have the skill as most of the posters in here but I will donate my sub fee of upto about $20-$25 each month and I can also donte a little extra to any Kickstart fund.

Reading through all 14 pages makes me proud to be apart of such a great community.  Now lets save this game !!! 

dior

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #211 on: September 04, 2012, 08:20:29 AM »
Hi there

Im glad to see people are willing to help, and so am I.

Sadly, I have no experience in design etc, and, like many people have little financially to donate.

I am however happy to contribute the equivalent of what I would have expected to pay in the way of subscriptions up to the close date into a fund should it be needed - not much, but it was already budjeted!

I hope and believe you guys can pull this off!


Scott Jackson

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #212 on: September 04, 2012, 10:18:08 AM »
Good luck to us all.

I downloaded Wireshark 1.8.2 (first time I've used one of these) and captured some interactions with the server, including collecting a few items from the auction house, cancelling and placing new bids, starting and aborting a Ouro flashback, and running one ITF.

It may have been my newbieness, or maybe filtering works differently in different Wireshark versions - anyway, I ran into a few minor problems.  Here's what I did to resolve them:

1) It wasn't obvious how to apply a Capture Filter, and Help was less than helpful.  I thought that the "capture filters" button in the toolbar would do the job but it had no effect besides allowing me to create a new filter - all the traffic to unrelated ip addresses still showed up.
Solution: double-click on the name of the capture interface in the list below "Start" or in the list of interfaces which appears after you click on "Capture Options".  There is a place to enter a capture filter string, however...[see problem #3]

2) Due to my initial failure above, I then tried a display filter.  This at least worked intuitively.  I created and saved the filter, which made a nice clickable toolbar button, and could apply it and clear it.  However, it wasn't completely filtering out the traffic to unrelated ip addresses.
Solution: I used the display filter "(ip.src >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.src < 64.25.48.0) or (ip.dst >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.dst < 64.25.48.0)" instead.

3) Since the display filter was hiding instead of actually eliminating the unrelated traffic, I went back to working on problem #1, at which point I found its solution, but encountered another problem. When I tried the suggested string "ip.addr >= 64.25.32.0 and ip.addr < 64.25.48.0", it complained about an invalid capture filter syntax; my display filter string also failed to work.  After a bit of searching, I found that capture filters and display filters work differently, and I made a new capture filter string "net 64.25.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0" which seemed to work.  Maybe someone who knows Wireshark better than me can point where I went wrong at first, or make an even better capture string.

Hope this helps other Wireshark newbies.

Codewalker

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #213 on: September 04, 2012, 12:16:27 PM »
Ah, if that's what it wants then "net 64.25.32.0 mask 255.255.240.0" should do the trick and cut down the IP range to just the NCSoft block.

BiggerThanToast

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #214 on: September 04, 2012, 01:44:11 PM »
I've come to add my support wherever I can add it. I'm the current leader of the Artful Dodgers on Virtue and we were talking about starting up a new guildsite which meant that I was setting aside money to set up a website. I've got some people within the guild that we might be able to tap for various skills. Personally I've got a Bachelors in English, and happen to be a pretty competent writer.

Though I suppose you're probably up to your neck in writers at the moment, so I'll just chill out and continue to set aside money for whatever.

Beyond that I've got some web developers and artists that I might be able to get on board. If you have need for any of those, also one of my friends has been modding the game for a while I'm sure that he might have some insight into the coding of the game and stuff.

Tsumiju Zero

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #215 on: September 04, 2012, 01:46:40 PM »
question - do we currently have a "war chest"? if so I'd be willing to contribute if needed.

nitz

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #216 on: September 04, 2012, 02:26:01 PM »
I am not a highly skilled programmer nor a 3D artist but I have some good experience working with MySQL/MSSQL/PostgreSQL, I've also ran a UO shard based on RunUO and made a lot of fairly complex scripts and some C#, C++ programming.

I do work within IT field administrating systems and dedicated servers, mostly FreeBSD and RHEL.

While I do know my experience is far from what's needed for an actual working project in short terms I can dedicate some of my time to it and help as much as I can as soon as we have some coordination and actual goals.

Also if cash is needed I would gladly donate my CoX yearly subscription.

eabrace

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #217 on: September 04, 2012, 02:46:48 PM »
question - do we currently have a "war chest"? if so I'd be willing to contribute if needed.
We are currently in the process of finding out what options are actually available to us.  Once we've figured out that part, we'll need to decide which available option to pursue.  At that point, depending on the decision, we may need to start building the war chest.
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Mister Bison

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #218 on: September 04, 2012, 02:56:11 PM »
We are currently in the process of finding out what options are actually available to us.  Once we've figured out that part, we'll need to decide which available option to pursue.  At that point, depending on the decision, we may need to start building the war chest.

You may want to gradually put up a FAQ about these kinds of questions. Just a big, red "F.A.Q.", even if it's not really Frequently Asked Questions, could inform a lot of people really well and fast.

This would be the answer to "I want to give financial support to saving City of Heroes, what do I do ?'
Yeeessss....

Tsumiju Zero

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Re: Meanwhile, in the Halls of Titan...
« Reply #219 on: September 04, 2012, 03:21:03 PM »
Well I'll continue to monitor the thread and repost the link to here when I can.  8)