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DungeonRunners Revival Resources and Information Dump
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Sorry to get hopes up for anyone looking for a working version, I just thought it would help any aspiring workers and/or current workers on such revival projects by creating a thread here (and linking it elsewhere) containing the list of projects currently trying to revive DungeonRunners, as well as sharing all resources I have been able to find.

Furthermore, if there is any new information, I will edit this post as necessary to keep people up to date, or create a new post.

So far to my knowledge there are three different groups working on a revival, and I will start in a chronological order from when they 'started' as far as I can tell.


rvnknight and the Private Server Thread

http://dungeonrunnersrefugees.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=188

Effectively the beginning of the first projects to start up a revival of Dungeon Runners following the closure in 2010. Though rvnknight has said a lot of their progress, he has little to show for it, with many of his links ending in dead ends. http://www.renegadeknight.com is his private gaming website where he uploads some projects, and has in the past kept blogs that he has since removed or lost access to. This thread also lead to the finding of two online sources where the game's launcher can be downloaded, but the main game was unable to be downloaded due to the need to receive files directly from ncsoft. I don't want to risk a direct link to these sources, but if you PM me or look through the thread there towards the end, you can find them.


Maxammus and the Login Screen

http://dungeonrunnersrefugees.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=772

Though he personally did not list any of his own resources, we have demonstrated proof of being able to access the login screen. https://gfycat.com/OrangeGrandioseHoneybadger , https://imgur.com/WjOGVQu , https://gfycat.com/FavorableGrossFieldmouse


kukfa's github repositories and Facebook Group

https://github.com/kukfa?tab=repositories

https://www.facebook.com/groups/189841361029937//

After this, things seem to go dark until April 29th, 2015 when Dave Kukfa starts compiling all the available information he has and starts trying to cobble together all of it into something workeable from Maxammus's efforts and that of others. So far, thanks to his efforts, we have, as of the dates posted:

  • March 27, 2016: Working Authentication Server and the discovery that the protocols and such relies almost exactly on the same information as Lineage II's earlier builds
  • October 16, 2016: Passwords and usernames are now properly decrypted
  • November 12, 2016 - Dave is able to make it to the loading screen after login
  • November 23, 2016 - Character creation screen for unchanged template of a fighter properly displays
  • December 16, 2016 - Characters can be saved after creation
  • June 2, 2017 - Characters names now attached to saved characters
  • July 4, 2017 - Items can now be equipped
  • August 8, 2017 - Hey folks, another quick update: Built an object serialization framework on the server side, which makes it quicker and easier to generate test data to send to the game client to see how it responds.
  • September 5, 2017 - Dungeon Runners Project Primer
  • September 30, 2017 - Successful login to a blank server!!!
  • October 1, 2017 - Dave announces: "Today, I can confidently say that we can bring this game back to life and achieve -- in some way, shape, or form -- a playable game in the end." Lots of work still left to be done, but now that it can be proven that individual characters can be saved, equipped, named, and actually log in, the game can be revived. "This latest breakthrough opened the door to the next phase of work, which is general gameplay and trying to load into something that doesn't look like the Pacific Ocean... From this point onward, the overall goal is to get a very basic single-player prototype working, and gradually add in features once we reach a stable base."
  • October 10, 2017 - Townston successfully loaded up, though with the character 'missing'.
  • November 2, 2017 - "...uncovered a few more of the byte fields in the protocol so we can specify the player's xyz coordinates and which direction they're facing, along with some other stuff like PvP wins and attributes..."
  • November 12, 2017 - "Huge discovery tonight: The final v666 client was released with debugging symbols, but they were stripped (with reduced information). So far, this has made progress feasible but slow... The retail box version.. has full symbol info 🙂"
  • April 13, 2018 - Reversing Plugin released
  • May 27, 2018 - "Been hitting a bunch of walls trying to make progress over the past few months, and I think it's largely because the initial Python server I hacked together to get us off the ground has finally reached its limits... So the plan going forward is to re-write the server in C , doing things 'the right way'."
  • July 17, 2018 - "Making progress slowly but surely on the server refactor! Started to get into my stride writing C code, and finally got packet serialization and decompression working tonight - code is on GitHub at https://github.com/kukfa/mmoserver/tree/cpp if you'd like to follow along."

Latest update as of August 5th:

"Reached another milestone on the server last night! Researched and implemented a message queue that transfers packets from the client to their corresponding service (e.g. the entity manager) within the server. Code is up at https://github.com/kukfa/mmoserver/tree/cpp

What does this mean in the grand scheme of things? The server can be separated into two logical components: the infrastructure (networking, message queuing, etc.) and the game logic (player movement, groups, combat, etc.). Enough of the foundational infrastructure is built now, so I can start writing game logic that allows gameplay."

Edit: An additional change to the cpp tree on his github was made at August 26th. No additional changes since then. Dave is on vacation at the moment, and/or currently focusing on schooling.


In conclusion, we could very well see the return of Dungeon Runners within a few months at this rate (though that's me being hopeful, don't pressure Dave)! Though it'll probably just be the first few dungeons, I wouldn't expect anything past Lair of the Snow Chieftain anytime soon.

Make sure to join the discord as well as the Facebook group for real-time updates. If you have anything to add to this, please feel free to do so in the comments or let me know and I'll edit it in.

In the meantime, here, have some nostalgia.

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