Why COH will not get a server emulator.

[eabrace]

He wouldn't worry about wearing pants if his characters were on Triumph....
*going on a Hami raid*

Hamikinis for everyone!

[Tenzhi]

I love how you're all discussing the best way to implement a function that I pulled out of my ass and wrote two bad ways to implement it as an example. Not sarcasm.

I love how I'm *not* the nerd in this social environment.

I'm still a social pariah, of course, but one out of two ain't half bad...

[Nightmarer]

Don't exfoliate too often, you'll go blind.

I'll stop when I get specs then

[Ice Trix]

You know, I don't care what it is called or how it works. If something lets me play again , I want it.

I would even be happy if the game was somehow made single-player.

I am the same.

[Arcana]

An emulator would try to copy this behavior exactly, because accuracy is the goal.

Oooh, that's not right.

An emulator attempts to emulate the same behavior as the original code, which generally means it takes the same inputs and generates the same outputs.  It does not need to attempt to do so with precisely the same algorithms.  What you're talking about is more of a server simulator, something that would, for reasons unknown, want to recreate the computational behavior of a server instance.

The real reason why a server emulator is unlikely is much simpler.  An emulator would attempt to reproduce the behavior of a server instance given its original inputs.  The inputs from the clients we have, because we have the clients.  But the *other* inputs to the server instances are the game data, which includes data not in the game clients.  We don't have that data, so we don't have the correct inputs.  Without them, making a server emulator that can read them is an impossible, and also worthless, goal.

[Samuraiko]

Yeah, I just want the game back.  Call it an emulator, call it a simulator, call it an exfoliator, I don't really care.  Just wanna play.  I have so many character ideas still fermenting in my head.

Hero Exfoliator needs to be a billboard in the game.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[dwturducken]

Hero Exfoliator needs to be a billboard in the game.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Wow! I'm actually surprised that it wasn't, especially since the issue of exfoliating (or, at least, depillating) was directly addressed in the John Byrne Superman miniseries.

[Leandro]

Oooh, that's not right.

[...]

The real reason why a server emulator is unlikely is much simpler. [...]  Without them, making a server emulator that can read them is an impossible, and also worthless, goal.

Yay! Arcanaville only slightly corrected me and still agrees with the gist of the post! That's as good as being told I'm right by everybody else in the planet!

[Atlantea]

Yay! Arcanaville only slightly corrected me and still agrees with the gist of the post! That's as good as being told I'm right by everybody else in the planet!

*sage nod*   It is, innit?

[healix]

[Number Six]

If such a server were to exist, "Hero Exfoliator" sounds like a perfect code name for it, so that the people who know, know what to look for without it being too obvious.

Make it so.

[FatherXmas]

Why am I imagining a Paragon city billboard with a photogenic hero showing off a palm sander but in a more decorative bathroom color?

[Arcana]

Why am I imagining a Paragon city billboard with a photogenic hero showing off a palm sander but in a more decorative bathroom color?

It fills a hole left behind when Joanne Liebeler stopped appearing on Hometime?

[srmalloy]

Why am I imagining a Paragon city billboard with a photogenic hero showing off a palm sander but in a more decorative bathroom color?

Just the thing for dealing with a nasty outbreak of palmar trichosis...   

[Von Krieger]

Likely some heroes would have to use one. Considering I myself have to use a friggin' rock on most of my body to get the dead skin off.

[Samuel Tow]

As a non-native speaker, I feel like I am walking on a thin ice here, but I always understood the word emulation not as a process of making a perfect copy or a mirror image, but as an act of imitating something in a manner that is in effect indistinguishable from the original. Sure, some emulators are very precise and thorough, especially those that are trying to mimic hardware, but only because - as you pointed it out yourself - even a little quirk could matter. If only they could get away with being less precise, they probably would.

So, the word emulation fits here perfectly. And, frankly, compatible server sounds weird.

I'm in the same boat, myself. I've always understood "emulation" to mean the creation of an environment within which something can operate that's incompatible with the environments it naturally has access to. Whether you emulate that environment with exacting accuracy - which I would actually term a "simulation" or loosely, what matters about an emulator is that it make the software run as it was intended.

I guess the difference in terms here comes from whether you're trying to emulate City of Heroes or THE SERVER which runs City of Heroes. In this regard, I appreciate Leandro's point: The game runs fine on modern machines and we don't care about the architecture which intercepts the various server calls. We want to emulate City of Heroes itself, which means creating an environment suitable for its needs, and that doesn't have to be a copy of the original server architecture.

[FatherXmas]

Probably "simulator" would be a better term.  We are looking to simulate the data that came from the official servers so the client would believe it's attached to the original servers.

[Little Green Frog]

What's up with this quest for an alternative to the perfect word for the job?

According to Oxford Dictionary, to emulate means "[to] match or surpass (a person or achievement), typically by imitation". There is also a case for usage of emulate in computing: "reproduce the function or action of (a different computer, software system, etc.)".

Other dictionaries have similar definitions. I particularly like the one from dictionary.com, which says that in computing to emulate stands for "to imitate (a particular computer system) by using a software system, often including a microprogram or another computer that enables it to do the same work, run the same programs, etc., as the first". The emphasis is mine.

Emulation does not equal to making an exact copy. What you guys are striving to make would be an actual emulator. But quite frankly, the whole argument is silly. You can call it a hero exfoliator or George if you'd like. Nobody will mind as long as we get to play the game.

[FatherXmas]

It's just because when you say emulator people think of MAME or the virtual consoles running old games on modern consoles.  Or even DOSBox for old PC games that manipulated PC hardware directly to get the most performance out of the system (ah the good old days of ignoring DOS and the BIOS and writing down at the metal  )

[damienray]

Mame ? The one with Lucy ? <runs - hides>.