Did any of you ever look at trinity core? http://www.trinitycore.info/Main_Page

I know it's intented for illegal wow servers, but I think it could be adjusted to be a more general framework for mmo servers, no?

And since the code is open source and written from scratch, it wouldn't be illegal if you don't use is it as a warcraft server, I guess. Or am I wrong?

At first sight it provides authentification, a very nice log system, config files, AI handling, chat with multiple channels and of course all the obvious things an mmo server needs. Writing all that myself would take me ages. Seems to me there's a pretty complete server package almost ready for use. The only part that is not documented is what the client is supposed to do, but I think it can't be that hard to figure that out if you see the server code.

Curious what you all think of it.

Not illegal at all,only use with hosting other companies product
Remember that reverse engineering a Client is no easy task either:

Well, I'm still studying the database functions for now. I'm trying to start from an empty project and import classes and functions one by one, once I understand what they do.

But I think it can't be that hard, since you know what input the server expects from the client. Also it can't be that different from other games. I mean like when you have to send/receive positions actions, and you know what format the server expects, you have everything you need to know. You still have to interpolate the result on the client, but there are examples of that in the MMO code. Other messages should even be more easy.

Perhaps the encryption could be the most difficult, but you can replace that on the server side.

Its pretty funny tho that u linked the Trinity core... its basically MaNGOS Core with another name slapped on it... Its the same with the Ascent core/Antrix etc

But like Zervox said its pretty tough to reverse engineer an entire client.. and copying files.. are you for real? The Trinity core is pretty complicated already with lots of tools integrated. I think its easier to start your own project using RakNet or whatever library u can use then understanding an entire server core which has been developed for like 6 years.

Encryption they use in wow is an enhanced srp encryption which is not the most documented encryption out there... and replacing that with a simple login algorithm wont do well as a mmo server


~Dynad

I know. I looked at MaNGOS first, but development was stalled since a few years. So I went looking if there where some more recent forks. Trinity looked like the most active developed one.

And yes, starting something myself with raknet was an option too. But then I would still need to write an aweful lot of code myself. I think I can give this a month or so, and see how it goes. If it doesn't turn out useful I will still have learned a lot from it. Like right now I start to see how they use several threads to work with the database. I don't think I could come up with a solution like that, let alone test it as much as they did.

And it's not like the code really needed 6 years of development. The last years are mainly bugfixes i can profit from, and implementing AI behaviour scripts for the wow client which I don't need.

Anyway, we'll see. If it's too difficult I'll have to find something else. If it's not, I'll have some really nice server code to share. After all, it's gpl code.

Ok, I stand corrected :-)

It wasn't that hard to have an EE program connect to the server, and several portions of the code are certainly interesting to look at. Also there is a client project called pseuwow. It's asleep for over a year, but there's enough code in it to see how you have to do the networking part. So you don't really have to reverse engineer the client.

In a few days (evenings) I had the logon challenge procedure working. Which is interesting because it works with challenges instead of just comparing passwords. So I guess it's not impossible to do this. But on the other hand, the whole thing would take me months to complete. So for now, I'll have to leave it be.

It is very doable man. Ofc you will get all the bugs that come with trinity core, but as you said it would still save you much time. We did something similar with l2j too.