Mabinogi Technical Info (Updated 4/27/2015)

• Paradise wrote on 2013-12-27 17:51

  Quote from Xcelled194;1182095:

  If every app was required to implement its own networking and display routines, the world would be chock full of extremely slow, buggy, insecure programs that would take 3 times as long to write.

  
  
  webkit allows you to do this, java also helps a lot, there's a bunch of apps that use their own web display, and to be honest, what nexon needs isn't complex in this case
• X wrote on 2013-12-28 00:12

  Quote from Paradise;1182200:

  webkit allows you to do this, java also helps a lot, there's a bunch of apps that use their own web display, and to be honest, what nexon needs isn't complex in this case

  
  
  Webkit is an example of the heavy libraries that would need to be linked to the app. Java is a framework, and there's no way in hell DevCAT is switching to Java, they're not that stupid. In addition, Java primarily offers socket-based networking - hardly much of an abstraction. Java's webview is actually webkit, so you don't shed any dependency weight either.
  
  I have yet to find a non-browser app that implements its own HTML Engine. There's simply no reason for it when you can embed a third party engine to render HTML. And there's no reason for that when you can just ask Windows to give you one (Okay, there are reasons, but for the general case, it's more than enough)
  
  Actually, most of Nexon's pages are complex in web terms - they have CSS, JS, embedded content, links, etc. They need a full-featured rendering engine. The hotkeys and such, yes, the XML is downloaded and then dumped straight into the parser - not too complex. But why should the developer then go and embed another networking library just to download some XML? The same thing they use to display webpages is well suited to that purpose. And they're using core parts of IE, because see also: no reason to include a third party lib when you can piggyback off Windows.
• Silverkun wrote on 2013-12-28 06:05

  Quote from Xcelled194;1182095:

  Some good points

  
  
  I was mostly following you until you said this:
  

  the world would be chock full of extremely slow, buggy, insecure programs

  
  
  Insecure? Man, if we want insecure, all we have to do is use Internet Explorer. Well, Windows in general, really, not just IE. I'm not sure why people don't use Linux. As far as I can tell, it's simply because of the capitalist structure of the society. And probably because learning about something as complicated as computer systems, and how to use them in such a way that you don't constantly leave yourself wide open to anyone with basic knowledge in certain areas, takes a fair amount of effort. It's not that much, since there are so many widely available tools and sources of information to help you, but I guess it's a fair amount.
  
  Also, the launcher does not even need that display. If you just want to display the latest news headlines and the game's logo or whatever, okay, but you don't need to display a web page to do that. I think that if we make some effort to not needlessly complicate the game, we won't need to do anything unreasonable when it comes to web content for Mabinogi. That numbered list you gave, sure it's complicated, but it doesn't look unreasonable to me. But maybe that's just my lack of experience, and it's much more troublesome than it looks, especially considering that Mabinogi needs to do more than just what's on that list. I can accept that that may be the case.
  
  Even without that, there has got to be a better program to use than IE. There just has to be. At the very least, they could give the option to provide a different program for Mabinogi to use. I know this is a Linux program, but something like wget would be great for pulling data from some server on the internet. I know that isn't all that needs to be done, but it's a good start.
  
  But this is just one of what is basically an ocean of problems with Mabinogi where they just do not seem to be even trying. There's no point in singling this one out anymore, and agonizing over it.
  
  In my idealized fantasy world, there are at least some who realize that giving their programming team deadlines is stupid because it's more important to actually do a good job that we can be proud of, and there are at least some who realize that when trying to produce works of art (such as an entire game where the player is supposed to be able to get immersed in their role-playing adventures in a different world), the desire to obtain currency does not work as the primary motivation for it. There are also at least some who realize that they could make more popular products and therefore gain more currency if they took the time to do a good job. If they took pride in their work.
  
  Well, okay, there are people in this world who realize those things, but they are very much in the minority. I wish I could find a quality MMORPG that has not been a victim of this. Alas, I have yet to find even one.
• X wrote on 2013-12-28 08:08

  Quote from Silverkun;1182345:

  I was mostly following you until you said this:
  
  
  Insecure? Man, if we want insecure, all we have to do is use Internet Explorer. Well, Windows in general, really, not just IE. I'm not sure why people don't use Linux. As far as I can tell, it's simply because of the capitalist structure of the society. And probably because learning about something as complicated as computer systems, and how to use them in such a way that you don't constantly leave yourself wide open to anyone with basic knowledge in certain areas, takes a fair amount of effort. It's not that much, since there are so many widely available tools and sources of information to help you, but I guess it's a fair amount.
  
  Also, the launcher does not even need that display. If you just want to display the latest news headlines and the game's logo or whatever, okay, but you don't need to display a web page to do that. I think that if we make some effort to not needlessly complicate the game, we won't need to do anything unreasonable when it comes to web content for Mabinogi. That numbered list you gave, sure it's complicated, but it doesn't look unreasonable to me. But maybe that's just my lack of experience, and it's much more troublesome than it looks, especially considering that Mabinogi needs to do more than just what's on that list. I can accept that that may be the case.
  
  Even without that, there has got to be a better program to use than IE. There just has to be. At the very least, they could give the option to provide a different program for Mabinogi to use. I know this is a Linux program, but something like wget would be great for pulling data from some server on the internet. I know that isn't all that needs to be done, but it's a good start.
  
  But this is just one of what is basically an ocean of problems with Mabinogi where they just do not seem to be even trying. There's no point in singling this one out anymore, and agonizing over it.
  
  In my idealized fantasy world, there are at least some who realize that giving their programming team deadlines is stupid because it's more important to actually do a good job that we can be proud of, and there are at least some who realize that when trying to produce works of art (such as an entire game where the player is supposed to be able to get immersed in their role-playing adventures in a different world), the desire to obtain currency does not work as the primary motivation for it. There are also at least some who realize that they could make more popular products and therefore gain more currency if they took the time to do a good job. If they took pride in their work.
  
  Well, okay, there are people in this world who realize those things, but they are very much in the minority. I wish I could find a quality MMORPG that has not been a victim of this. Alas, I have yet to find even one.

  
  
  (Good points; glad to see you're thinking instead of just jumping on the flame button as netizens are wont to do. Also, I'll leave the Windows vs *nix debate out of this thread for brevity, but it can be summarized as "Microsoft is King of the Hill".)
  
  Compared to a custom engine, IE is quite secure. Compared to other popular browsers it is not. I was also referring to (in the general case) things like SSL, sandboxing, drive-by downloads and other stuff that IE has years of experience handling.
  
  Make no mistake here: I think IE is a crappy browser and people who use it make my skin crawl. That said, I would much rather use IE than Joe Blow's shifty browser/engine he homebrewed over the past few months. This is a subtle but crucial distinction. In addition, for most of what programs want to do, IE is just fine. As you said, it's the human element that is often the cause of problems.
  
  Sure there are other programs. But speaking from experience, it can be hell trying to get your program to successfully interop with even one other program. Trying to support multiple options is a huge headache at best and impossible at worst. As I said, devcat could go the whole hog and use a third party library, but last I saw, webkit was almost 50mb. That means, if they used webkit, the launcher would be 50 times bigger and take 50 times longer to update. (By the way, look at wget's source to see what's involved in even that "simple" program. It's quite amazing, actually :o http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/ )
  
  Actually, I can't think of a better way to show the latest news than to use HTML. If you don't use HTML, you're stuck updating the launcher every time something needs to be changed. New event? Update launcher. Fixed typo? Update launcher.
  
  Actually many people realize that deadlines introduce bugs. Sadly, the real world takes over. If a company spends 10 years finding and fixing bugs, they'd be lucky to be open long enough to release the game. Developers need to be paid, after all. This is one reason why open source/indie dev is so popular. When the project isn't concerned with staying afloat financially, you can afford to take extra time and really polish your product. There's a flip side to that, though: the developers lose interest as all the "fun" stuff gets completed, and start to drift away to other ventures until the project is dead. Sad but true.
• Rydian wrote on 2013-12-29 21:09
  A lot of the confusion probably comes from people not realizing that "Trident" != "IE".
  The Trident rendering engine is available via the Win32 API.
  http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/3365/Embed-an-HTML-control-in-your-own-window-using-pla
  
  Anyways I haven't had much time to dig around in Mabi lately, but I did work out copying other people's score scrolls (on a basic level). They have to play it first, but once they start playing it their MML is, of course, sent to your client. It's sent zipped (thanks to xcelled for pointing that out), but is then uncompressed and stored in RAM as unicode in the client in the block format, minus the MML@ marker at the beginning. If I figure something else out to do it easier or have time to make examples I'll edit the first page with it.
• X wrote on 2013-12-31 08:18
  Skill training starts at the maximum and decreases from there. So for example, Playing inst rank 1 starts at 420/420, and you get the master title at 0/420. The client inverts this for display.
• X wrote on 2014-01-07 08:23
  For this "Find Joe" event, Nexon actually added 52 new NPC names to the pack files. And they all say "Caravan Joe".
• Genny wrote on 2014-01-07 08:33

  Quote from Xcelled194;1185362:

  For this "Find Joe" event, Nexon actually added 52 new NPC names to the pack files. And they all say "Caravan Joe".

  
  Can you confirm if the 25 Points Training Seal formed by 7 coupons can be traded through bank sharing or not?
• Snowie Stormflower wrote on 2014-01-07 09:04

  Quote from Genny;1185366:

  Can you confirm if the 25 Points Training Seal formed by 7 coupons can be traded through bank sharing or not?

  
  
  Here you go.
  
  

  [Image: http://i.imgur.com/fJPztzx.png]
• Krystalys wrote on 2014-01-07 19:26

  Quote from Xcelled194;1185362:

  For this "Find Joe" event, Nexon actually added 52 new NPC names to the pack files. And they all say "Caravan Joe".

  
  
  http://pastebin.com/EKmTXKyh
• X wrote on 2014-01-07 20:24

  Quote from Krystalys;1185458:

  http://pastebin.com/EKmTXKyh

  
  
  I meant the actual NPCs have their own entries in the NPC names file. Meaning you can edit their names to be the specific attributes of the NPC, and thus stop squinting at their faces.
• Krystalys wrote on 2014-01-07 20:43

  Quote from Xcelled194;1185473:

  I meant the actual NPCs have their own entries in the NPC names file. Meaning you can edit their names to be the specific attributes of the NPC, and thus stop squinting at their faces.

  
  
  And I provided the specifics to do so.
• X wrote on 2014-01-07 20:57
  Actually, I just did the eyes, since the eyes are the only clue you get in the first minute.
• Krystalys wrote on 2014-01-07 21:02

  Quote from Xcelled194;1185485:

  Actually, I just did the eyes, since the eyes are the only clue you get in the first minute.

  
  
  Likewise, but someone was inevitably going to ask for the rest expecting to somehow shoehorn a miracle out of that, and that shows how futile it is because the 2nd hint is borderline worthless in many cases. ( Innocent Santa? That really narrowed it down. )
• Kenero wrote on 2014-01-08 02:30
  To be fair, only the eyes are important clues if you're aiming for the 15 AP. The other clues come a bit too late.