[Morrighan - Client proxy]

Morrighan acts as a kind of proxy, it makes the client connect to a special local server that forwards all packets from the client to the actual server. This way it's able to read every single packet that gets sent or received. These packets are then passed to other applications, so they can work with them, e.g. loggers like Pale.

Not only is this way of logging much more reliable than the packet sniffing in MabiPale 1, it also allows to log local traffic without jumping through hoops, so you can log the traffic to your own local Aura server if you so desire. It should work with any official server and it's unlikely to break.

The look and feel is similar to Pake+mod_Alissa, but without the hacks^^ It's even compatible to Alissa Analyzer, if anyone would want to use it.

Download

How to log

Let's assume you want to log packets from NA. Instead of launching the client through the patcher you would create a link/bat, like you would to connect to a local server, but with the NA IPs. And instead of client.exe you would use Morrighan.exe (which you have to put into your Mabi folder), that's it.

Morrighan.exe code:1622 ver:143 logip:208.85.109.35 logport:11000 chatip:208.85.109.37 chatport:8002 setting:"file://data/features.xml=Regular, USA"

What will happen here is that Morrighan reads the parameters, replaces the logip and port with the ones to a new local server it started, and finally starts the client. You will see a little window in the upper left, to let you know that Morrighan is running. Once you see that window you can use a tool like Pale to connect to it and log packets.

The window closes automatically when the client gets closed. You can also double click it to quickly close Morrighan and the client.

How to connect to Morrighan

Morrighan uses the same API as the tool it was inspired by, "Alissa". It uses WM_COPY messages to communicate between Morrighan's and the subscriber's window. To subscribe to Morrighan, to receive packets, you send the "op" (dwData) 100 to Morrighan's window (window name: "mod_Alissa"), to unsubscribe, you send 101. While you're subscribed, you receive all incoming (op 0x10101012) and outgoing (op 0x10101011) packets via the same method.

For an actual example on how this works, I suggest looking at the corrosponding functions in Pale. Alternatively you can also create a plug-in for Pale, which will be easier.

Nexon Launcher

With the removal of direct launch in NA and possibly other regions, the NX hash login has to be used to start Morrighan for officials now, which uses the /P parameter to pass the login information to the client directly. Morrighan can assist you in retrieving that parameter, so you can still easily start the client with it.

Starting with Morrighan 1.5.11 you can add the parameter nxlauncher to your normal NA start up parameters. If you do so, Morrighan temporarily replaces your Client.exe with itself. Then you click Play in the Nexon Launcher, which doesn't start the client, but Morrighan instead, which now doesn't start the game, but just notes down the NX hash. Afterwards you click OK in the window of the original Morrighan, which reverts the Client.exe back to normal, retrieves the hash from a temporary file, and then starts the client as it normally would.

Example: Morrighan.exe code:1622 ver:143 logip:208.85.109.35 logport:11000 chatip:208.85.109.37 chatport:8002 setting:"file://data/features.xml=Regular, USA" nxlauncher

Restrictions

Right now Morrighan only supports the Login and Channel servers, you won't get any messenger packets, it lets the client connect directly there. It was easier to code it like this and we don't really need the messenger packets anymore.

[MabiPale - Packet Logger]

MabiPale 2 is the second version of MabiPale ("Pale"), a packet logger for Mabinogi. Unlike its first version, Pale 2 doesn't rely on error prone packet sniffing anymore, but utilizes Alissa compatible packet providers, like Morrighan.



Pale 2 was coded from scratch, to clean it up and make it extendable through a plugin system. All Pale 1 features that weren't just simple logging have now been implemented as plugins, like the Packet Analyzer and the Entity Logger. 2 more planned future plugins are a dialog parser and a search function. Additionally a few little things have been tweaked and added, like better performance and explicit filtering.

If you develop plugins of your own that you'd like to share, post them here. For examples of how to code plugins take a look at the plugins in the source.

Download
Source

Features

• Logging packets
• Alissa compatible logs
• Log management (deleting, filtering)
• Plugin system
• Official plugins:
  • Packet Parser: Parses packets from hex.
  • Entity Logger: Displays information about all creatures and props to be found in the logged packets.
  • Packet Analyzer: Shows additional information about selected packets, or converts the data into an Aura compatible format, e.g. dialog to Msgs.
  • DunGen: Dungeon floor layout visualizer.

How to use

MabiPale2 requires an Alissa compatible packet provider. Unless you have a working Pake with mod_Alissa lying around you can use Morrighan. Simply start the client with it and click connect in Pale. Unlike the old Pale there's no Start/Stop/Pause anymore, while you're connected you will get packets, while you're disconnected you won't. Since Morrighan gets all packets until you close your client you don't have to worry about pausing in Pale, connect/disconnect/reconnect whenever you like.

Setup

• Put Morrighan.exe into your Mabi folder
• Create a link to Morrighan.exe, using the parameters you would use to connect to your Aura server, but with NA IPs.

  Morrighan.exe code:1622 ver:143 logip:208.85.109.35 logport:11000 chatip:208.85.109.37 chatport:8002 setting:"file://data/features.xml=Regular, USA"

• Start the client with that link whenever you want to log packets.
• Click connect in Pale to subscribe to Morrighan's packet broadcast and to start logging packets.

Please note that to log the latest version of NA, which doesn't support direct login anymore, you need to use additional parameters for Morrighan. See the Morrighan thread for more information.

[Rules]

General

• No spamming. This includes double and non-meaningful posts (e.g. "lol", "thanks").
• No flaming.
• No trolling.
• Respect each other.
• Search the forum and the internet before asking questions.

Forbidden Content

• Obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or content violating general laws.
• Copyright infringing material. This includes, but is not limited to, copyrighted music, films, software, and client files.
• Links to private servers or information on how to play on publicly hosted servers. (Advertisement)
• Links to Aura or uploads of files that were subject to the DMCA.

Others

• This is an English forum and all posts should generally be in English as well.

 

Users and posts violating those rules will be punished appropriately and/or deleted

[The Project]

Some of you might be wondering what's happening behind the scenes at the moment, and the unfortunate answer is: not much. While I have been busy with work, I've also had some trouble motivating myself in the remaining time. I wasn't sure why, until earlier today, when I realized, I don't care that much for creating a game of my own. It's not that I don't like the idea of having a game, but planning and developing it...

I'm a coder. I'm not very creative, I'm not a designer, and I have trouble writing concepts. I'm nothing but a problem solver. I don't enjoy developing the parts of the game that make it a game (including the client). I can't do this alone, but that's what I did with Aura for the most part, and I'm afraid that's what's gonna happen here as well. I don't mind that so much while developing something I do enjoy (server emulators), but if it's something else, it's a different story.

You could say this whole idea is a desperate attempt to keep the spirit of Aura alive, for me, and for you. I'm still ready to do this, but if we want to do it, we have get some order in here, and we need more people on the core team who are able to take care of planning and the client, and also have the time for it.

The original (admittedly half-assed) plan was to let the concept come together on its own, from your input, but that's not gonna work.

Consider this a discussion on what we should do, what you might be able to contribute, and in which direction the new project should go.

[Take Aura apart?]

We've decided for 2D, we've decided for Unity, we want to create a Mabi-like game. What changed from before, when we had Aura and Aurora? Very little. We have a few new ideas, sure, but we also have 40k+ lines of code, ready to be (ab)used. Could Aura be used as the base for the new server?

When you have to work with other people's (sometimes questionable) design choices, you constantly think "how awesome would it be to do [this] my way". But you can't. You start to think about how you would do things if you were in control, a different packet here, a different way of communicating something there, that would make it all so much better. And it would be better, starting more or less from scratch, even with reusing some elements from Aura. But it would take longer.

We already went through these features though, we don't have to redo everything. We could simply remove everything that's "Mabi" from Aura (encryptions, databases, NPCs) and start to adjust Aura to our needs. It's hard for me to justify starting from scratch, when we have so much already done. And customizing it to improve the design is still very much possible. But a few of their decisions would probably stay with us forever.

[Inventory]

As for a weight system... I'm torn on this. I generally like the idea, and I feel that it's actually much more realistic than random stack limits. My only problem is that this implies items carry a realistic weight, and the added realism isn't always desirable from a gameplay perspective. For example, let's say you're in a dungeon and pick up a weapon and a heavy armor... Now you're fully weighted down and you haven't made it through the dungeon yet, so you want to go back and sell some things, but that's really a pain when you're in the middle of a dungeon. (Or impossible, depending on the game.) I like the strategic element of not being able to load up on stuff when going into battle, but I don't like the restriction to picking up loot along the way.

The level of realism in a weight system is something we control though, a hand full of armors doesn't have to weight you down. And monsters don't have to drop heavy things constantly. For example, even if you didn't have any points in Str in Ragnarok you were still able to carry, what, 1-2 dozen armors?

[S> Coding Abilities]

 Services

• Programming in all forms and colors, be it scripts, customizations, programs, or websites.
• Tutorials related to things I created, in text or video form.

 Pricing

• Depends highly on the job, but I'll keep the prices low. Just ask for an estimate.
• Maintenance, updates, and support for everything I produce for you is free of course. Contact me if anything breaks and I'll fix it asap.
• Payment via PayPal or Bank Transfer (make sure you're able to transfer money to the EU beforehand) after the work is done, 50% up front for time-consuming orders.

 Availability

• Usually 11:00 ~ 21:00 GMT+2 (02:00 ~ 12:00 PDT)
• Contact me via PM, on Gitter, or wherever else you see me, and I'll respond as soon as I can.

 Rules

• I don't do client modifications for any games, though I do tutorials on how to do them.

 References

• https://github.com/exectails

[What would you change?]

2. Detection by enemies being hindered/stopped (think Baol/infiltration and the Anti-Fomor Robe)

In what ways, things like a Hiding skill?

[Client Engine]

Before starting to select framework/engine we need to know what we can do with our current skills.

The best tool will be always a tool that you know how to use it, so we need to know everyone skills for making decisions based in our capacity.

Maybe we need a recruitment thread and everybody should post their skills and experience there. Then "staff" must categorize what skills and experience will be useful for server development, network communication, client application, web control, web site, etc.

Best teams are self-organized teams, so, we need to start to know what everyone want to do and start making some "kind of organization".

The best tool is the best tool, not the one you know how to use, a spoon will be rather useless if you need a hammer, no matter how familiar you are with the spoon. And there aren't that many high class hammers out there, fit for the kind of thing we want to do, so you can just as well choose the one that you just like best in my opinion.

You make some good points about building a team, we just haven't thought much about that because there's already a core team in place, and we generally know who is able to do what. This would be important to new community members, but I didn't consider the possibility of new people joining just yet, since we basically just went from Aura to this "new" idea and are still in the planning phase.

[Current stage: Conception/Planning]

Ideas of what scope, basic gameplay mechanics?  Anything specific?

Anything.

Check out the threads about combat, movement, etc. for discussions about the respective topic, or create a new topic if you want to talk about something else. Basically we'll take Mabi as the base, since that's what we're all familiar with, and we'd like to create a Mabi-like game.

[WASD Movement]

but if @exec make a poll, I'm sure wasd will win with great gap :\

Oh, it's not about which one we choose, we will definitely offer mouse movement, the question is whether to implement WASD at all, and if so, how to fix it, compared to Mabi.

along with horrible auto targeting and auto skill use

Good point, they're pretty misleading. We might not want to offer that at all. That should be part of the combat discussion though.

Or we change to something more like b&s or tera and moving to WASD?

Personally I'd prefer to keep a Mabi-like combat system, for me it's a big part of Mabi. It's not like hotkey combat, that you have to replace because it's antiquated, the Mabi combat is unique, with a system behind it.

If you can't combine WASD and the Mabi combat, you're right, then we should continue the combat discussion and see where that leads us.

[Project Name]

i meant the name i mean granted i do like aura as a server emulator but i like it more as a name

I meant the name too, I only explained why it wouldn't be correct to use it for a new program^^

[Combat]

we don't necessarily NEED a Smash

While that's not wrong, in effect you're basically talking about throwing out the entire combat system. With dodging and dynamic hitting you have an action-like combat system, akin to Tera.

[Oh no not untiy]

I've had nothing but bad experiences with games on unity though D:

Don't blame the engine for being so accessible and easy to use that newbies can create terrible games with it. If UE4 was so easy to use there would be an equal amount of terrible games created with it. Maybe even worse, since those terrible newbie programmers wouldn't be protected by .NET's garbage collector.

I like Unity's ease of use, but I like UE4's graphical capability... It came down to majority and priority, but I guess we have to work with what's chosen

UE4's out-the-box graphics are impressive, yes, but they are misleading. Unless you are able to create state of the art models and textures, you aren't even able to use UE4 to its full potential. It will look just as poor as any other engine. And if you are able to create AAA assets you can make them look just as good in Unity 5.

[WASD Movement]

Unless you meant upstairs/downstairs, but those are portals, and WASD doesn't work for any portals in the first place.

Though that could certainly be possible, optionally.

The main concern, aside from maybe some glitches, seems to be the combat. WASD doesn't seem to work too well with Mabi's combat system. In other games to mash hotkeys and that's it, but in Mabi you're loading a skill to use it at the right moment.

For example, loading Smash, going to the enemy with WASD, and then clicking the enemy to use it is awkward, but making the character auto attack the moment you activate Smash doesn't fit the style of the combat and would cause problems. What happens when you click the enemy is that you actually go into the melee combat handling, so what would work is running to the enemy and attacking it, maybe with an attack hotkey, as that would use the loaded skill, but that's probably a little cryptic, and it doesn't solve the problem for skills that don't use that.

[Combat]

all you need to do is remove loading times but increase cooldowns imo.

Increase them to what extend? Iirc Defense and Counterattack currently already have a cooldown of 7 seconds. And does increasing them really make the combat more challenging again? You'll still be able to use them during an enemy's combo, with the difference that when you make the cooldown too long the skills basically become useless for anything else, which kinda destroys the whole idea behind the combat system, doesn't it? 

[Project Name]

i still like aura

Me too. We could've probably kept using Aura, just without the Mabi data, but if we code our own game we can finally break free from devCAT's conventions =| And if we do that, the new server becomes different, it's not Aura anymore.

If you think about it, the Aura Project was slowly leading us to this point. Just two weeks ago I created Aurora, the beginning of a custom client for Aura, which would've been a turning point in this project. Aura is gone, but the Aura Project continues its work, of developing a server and now a client for a Mabi-like game.

[Combat]

Forcing people to take a break between fights would make the combat even slower though. And isn't that already the point of the stamina system? Take away the pots and you'd have that.

I still like being able to counter quickly

Sure, while I'm in danger I like that I can get out of it as well^^ That's the point here, isn't it? Breaking the enemy's combo to get a hit in yourself. But giving every defensive skill 0 load time makes it too easy. How about adding a new skill, with a comparatively high cooldown, that lets you break the combo and attack yourself, just for emergencies? Or only give 0 load time to Defense, so you can try to block an attack and strike back. But with Defense you still take damage and you don't knock back, which makes it more fair.

[Project Name]

Makes sense to me, "Aura Project" works. I strongly (and incorrectly) associated it with Aura itself. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Why not change "Project" to something that feels more group like for example "Collective" or "Team Aura" because to me that makes the name feel more agnostic of the software written itself.

Not such a bad idea, we should think about that.

[Project Name]

I moved the forum to aura-project.org for now, and I'll create the future repos on the aura-project organization on GitHub as well. The "Aura Project" will simply work on something else now.

We can change that any time if we come up with a good name.

[Combat]

The main critique point of the new combat system seems to be that it's too easy. You can spam Smash, you can load counter/defense during an enemy's combo, WM doesn't cost HP anymore, and probably more things that I don't know about. But it makes the combat feel a little more dynamic, it's a little more fast paced.

Personally, between the two, I prefer the old one. It was slower, but the reason for that was its strategic component. It simply wasn't a button masher, you were supposed to think about what you're doing. The question to me is, can you combine them somehow? Or are they contradictory? Can it be challenging and strategic, while also being more fast paced?

I'd like to keep the base concept of rock-paper-scissors, because to me that combat system is a huge part of Mabinogi.

[Project Name]

So you'd have 3 names - the server, client, and game engine?

The engine doesn't necessarily need a name right now.

[Project Name]

Shouldn't the client and server be the same name?

It's two different programs, like Aura and Aurora, or to some degree Pleione and Sahara.

[Project Name]

Is anyone opposed to keep using "Aura Project" for the organization and this site? I've realized that "Aura Project" != "Aura". Aura Project is the name of our organization, and our "flagship" product was Aura, but just because we can't work on Aura anymore doesn't mean we have rename the "company". Only the client and server need a new name.

[Inventory]

But if you limit the stack amount you will have multiple stacks of pots for example. If you want to put those on hotkeys you will have to choose one stack, and if that stack's empty you have to manually switch them. "Uncapped" stacks solve that problem.