Proteus
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Posts posted by Proteus
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The Config program is how you set up your resolution so the game doesn't run in a tiny window or look all pixelated.
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AWESOME!!! The end of a crappy installation journey, the beginning of a long overdue (much more fun) galactic journey.
Earlier in this thread I mentioned a Config program. You can open that up through the Net-7 Launcher. At the top-left of the launcher, go to Tools > E&BConfig. See my instructions earlier in this thread for details (including if the Config program doesn't want to run, there's an easy fix).
And when you're in the game, don't forget to go into Settings > Graphics, uncheck the default settings box, and slide everything except for gamma all the way to the right. You'll notice the difference!
If you hate the controls, just go into Settings > Controls and at the bottom of the window set it to the FPS control scheme for much more modern and familiar controls. -
I don't know if there's a community Discord, but if I'm around this weekend I'd be up for jumping into a Discord call and try to help. Unfortunately, that's a big "if" right now because I might have family plans, it's up in the air.
There would be no need to give me remote desktop access. You could simply (and much safer) stream your desktop to me during the call while I run you through the installation process. If it turns out to be some kind of firewall or router issue, I'm no expert in that department, but maybe I can at least help identify and communicate to the others here where the failure is.
If no one else can help and if we gotta do it another day, then your task at that point will just be to stay in touch. It's like you said, you've already waited 20 years. But it really is a blast to be seeing this game again and I hope you're willing to stay patient (and I salute your patience so far). o7 -
Oh, and I almost forgot. Once you're in the game, go into Settings > Controls and at the bottom of the window, just choose the Standard FPS controls layout or you WILL go nuts trying to figure out whatever the hell EA thought "Standard Persistent World" settings ought to be.
And then go into Settings > Graphics, uncheck the box for default values, and slide everything except for gamma all the way to the right. Instantly your game will appear crisper. -
@Celestial Kraken Me and my brother are just getting back into the game after a long time as well. We've had a smooth experience getting back in so it hurts my heart to see these posts lol.
My first question might sound dumb, but how many programs did you download and install from Net-7.org's downloads section? In your posts I see you've mentioned that you downloaded the game client. But I don't see any mention of the Net-7 Unified Installer.
If you haven't downloaded that, go ahead and download it, install it, and then let it run; it will restart itself a few times while applying a crap ton of updates to your client. Don't close any windows, just let it do its thing.
Don't read any further till you've done the above.
Now you might be tempted to hit Play and just start playing. Not so fast, or you'll be playing the game in a tiny window from yesteryear.
The Net-7 Unified Installer will also install a couple other programs on your PC:
1) The Config program (you might remember this from the old days). Welcome back to the early 2000s, this is what you'll use to set up your sound and resolution the way you want, you can't do it from the game. Right-click it and Run As Administrator. After you get your resolution and sound the way you want it, the program will offer to run a simulation; let it run the simulation, and then press OK or it won't save your preferences.
Open it again anyway just to make sure it really saved your preferences.
...Except your modern PC might not want to run the Config program at all. Sigh! If that's the case, go to Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\Earth & Beyond\EBCONFIG, right-click E&BConfig > Properties > Compatibility > and set the Compatibility Mode to probably anything. These forums recommend Windows XP Service Pack 3; I lazily just clicked Windows 7 and it made the Config program work (I'm on Windows 10).
2) The Net-7 launcher. Now you can finally hit Play near the bottom of the launcher. You must start the game with the Net-7 launcher. Every time. If you try to log in directly through the client, you'll get an INV-300 error like in your screenshot above.
"Where can I get the game and just host the dang thing on a server myself?"
Any amount of headache we go through to get you back in the game will be far, far less of a headache than the headaches you would experience by self-hosting and maintaining an old, cranky MMO project like this.
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So... where is this mythical wiki? :)
I looked at the top of the forum and at the links on the portal--no links to a wiki. Is it someone's unofficial contribution to E&B?
Speaking of unofficial, I found this site yesterday: http://enbarsenal.com/
It has searchable mobs and vendor information for the emulator. But it hasn't been updated since around 2009, so unless it's pulling data directly from the emulator, I'm not sure how useful it will be. I found it while looking for any current information about mob damage types. Unfortunately, ENB Arsenal does not feature those in its results.
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Proteus Doctorow, Jenquai Explorer, on Galileo.
There were others, like Noitseuq (a Jenquai Defender). But I've never been as social in E&B as in some other MMOs. As much as I like E&B, I'm primarily social as a roleplayer in MMOs. If the roleplay isn't there, I'll still roleplay--I'll just be doing it in my head and in my captain's logs or something. :P
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Thanks.
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Just out of curiosity, what kind of hardware are the servers running on and how many concurrent users could we fit at once these days?
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If you're talking about the error that occurs during installation when you're downloading all of the launcher's various updates, then I'm surprised to finally be hearing this from someone else, because I've received that error during every installation, no matter what computer or Windows operating system I've used. The solution, believe it or not, is just to press the "Continue" option and move along with the updates; the Launcher will resume updating, and this error will NEVER affect the game. It could be something that affects the dev team's ability to do some kind of server work on their end, who knows, but again, this shouldn't affect the game for you.
In fact, there are a couple of problems with installation that I've never seen addressed and which I'm assuming players generally find out on their own--or don't, and we never hear from them because, obviously, they gave up on installing the game.[color=#ffff00][b] The other issue is during the big client patch that the unified installer now handles.[/b][/color] It has always (even before being a part of the unified installer) tried to apply the patch to a tiny file in the game's main folder named 'e&b', which is only 40-something KB, which is FAR TOO SMALL to be the game client. So I've always manually told the pop-up window to apply the patch to the actual 'Client' file in the Release folder, that file being several thousand KB.
The fact that I've been able to play the game without problems tells me that I'm doing it right, and that the emulator's installation process has been doing it wrong--for years.
[b]Edit:[/b] [b][color=#ffff00]On second thought, after thinking about your post again, your problem could very well be my latter example[/color][/b], if you attempted to apply the patch to the file that the launcher suggests. Here's hoping you give it another try and give some feedback. -
Hey folks! Been playing again for about a week now, although not exclusively--I'm sticking with City of Heroes until November 30, which is when the eight year-long title is scheduled to be sunset. After three years as a loyal subscriber to COH, I'm not sure what game I'll be calling my "MMO home" after that. Ever since the beta announcement for the E&B emulator, I've been wanting to get back over here and play in some capacity. But after fifteen years of playing various massive online games, I know better than to make plans and commitments after a scant week of playtime.
However, I wanted to chime in and say that the beta phase is a GREAT time to start welcoming role-players back to any role-playing game. These types of players are often labeled as insular and exclusive by regular players, but what you may not know is that role-players provide a LOT of glue for player retention in MMOs. The key to retention is investment; and if you've ever witnessed active RP communities in other games, whether you participated or just found it all mildly disturbing, you probably noticed the RPers taking investment in their characters and virtual friendships to a whole new level. In City of Heroes, after the announcement of closure by publisher NCSoft, many players jumped ship immediately, and the RP server has the greatest number of surviving player groups staying put till the end. These people are crazy about their communities, and maybe a little obsessive, but that kind of dedication often pays for itself--and more. Players on the RP server have also consistently raised thousands more in funds for an [url="http://realworldhero.com/"]annual charity donation drive created by City of Heroes players[/url] than [i][b]all[/b][/i] of the other fifteen game servers [i][b]combined[/b][/i].
Furthermore, few groups care more about back-story lore and playable story content: some of the sharpest RPers out there have extensive experience with pen-and-paper RPG systems, and there's no better source for feedback and bug reporting (and development help) in the area of story content.
In a nutshell, no matter what your play style is, I heartily recommend players to encourage their friendly neighborhood role-players to invest their time in Earth and Beyond. -
[quote name='Bantar' timestamp='1347463213' post='63265']
Me too! It was Captain-Electric for me. You?[/quote]
*Salutes!*
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Might be sending a few more your way. Anywhere from a handful now, to a few hundred after November.
[url="http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4390146#post4390146"]http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4390146#post4390146[/url]
It's been a sad week in another universe. Never thought I'd see a day for my gaming hobby as sad as the day EnB's Live servers shut down, but after years of playing and developing my characters lives in City of Heroes, it's happening again.
For years, I hunted bugs and donated money to EnB's emulator throughout the alpha/stress tests, from the days of local servers to the public tests. I stopped helping or playing as much a couple years ago, when I became concerned that the project's political problems might hamper its development into a standstill, and I didn't like the thought of investing in, and losing, EnB again. But since then, EnB has broken the Beta barrier and continues on existing (as do my characters, I hear). I'm exceedingly happy to have been so wrong.
To help two communities at once, I've given a shout out to the City of Heroes community, which is entering its own sunset. There's rumors that all of our protests and letter-writing may persuade our publisher to sell the franchise and give us another home, but our prospects appear as merciless as our publisher, and many players are already jumping ship; so, as sunset approaches, I'll be sure to let them know there's a great game over here. And some people who know what it's like! -
GMs should not be interacting with the player population in this manner. GMs should not be supporting this kind of behavior among each other. This leads to favoritism, which is cancerous for any project this big.
Every time I pop in for a forum visit, I get let down by the way this project and its community has failed. Staff members should be focused on developing and polishing a quality product, not obsessing over loot to pimp their guilds with. I want to play Earth and Beyond again, not an endless ream of stress tests lead by petty and abusive staff members.
You people have squandered the opportunity to bring Earth and Beyond back to life, instead pandering to the desires of the vocal minority among your community (and your own staff).
A successful MMORPG emulator takes a certain level of discipline, integrity and maturity, folks.
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You do realize that the only reason this copyright was added is to prevent others from taking the code, claiming they did it all, and trying to charge for or sell services for what we intend to be open source work, right? Your response looks like you didn't read the copyright header nor what the terms were. Everyone's entitled to an opinion though, so if you did and this is still it, good on ya.
I will make my point clearer and apologize for not making it clearer above. If we're on the same page about all this, great! If not, boo-- and I'll come back to EnB when a fairer-minded development team opens another server.
If there are plans to create any copyrights with the aim of withholding content (such as story arcs, talk trees, or items) from free community use on their own potential servers, then the above still stands. If there are plans to restrict access to code or content data, or plans to avoid efforts to make code or content data easily available to the community at large, then the above still stands.
The concept of gradually releasing story content data to outside projects has been passed around, the goal being to encourage retention of users on Net-7's server(s). I hope this isn't the case. The success of the project should be based on the merits of the team's efforts, not based on the team's ability to enforce ownership in a way that's really just engineered to keep other developers away from your content.
When it comes to emulators, letting the community have your stuff is the right thing to do, whether you're the only development team on the block, or one team among hundreds. Spend some time at RunUO.com's forums. Thousands of emulator developers sharing each others work is a good thing. It works faster. It works stronger. And it keeps the emulator community decentralized, which has the benefit of making a cease and desist letter useless. Net-7 Entertainment ought to be in a hurry to decentralize the community, rather than putting it off.
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The tighter your hold, the weaker your grasp.
I've been around since the early days (way before Stress Test One), ran a local server (with multiple concurrent users), was a beta tester for this project as well as EA's EnB, and have oodles of previous emulator experience (Ultima Online, another EA title). But I have no stake in this project, whether it succeeds or fails, for two reasons.
By engaging in and abiding by messy internal politics, the stewards of this emulator have placed their egos before their task (this is so conspicuous that it has become noticeable to the community at large).
By putting property ownership and power above community ownership and freedom, our stewards have been replaced by gatekeepers.
You're the new EA, Net-7 Entertainment. Congratulations, and shame on you.
The single largest factor that will allow Ultima Online to survive and thrive well into the future (with or without EA's servers) is the community's freedom to share in each others efforts. This is paramount. This is an MMO community's lifeblood. And this includes tons of content, enough to make your eyes bleed. No hiding behind Open Source mantras or Creative Commons labels. Just a big all-you-can-eat buffet of shared efforts, where you can still get fame and glory for your creative efforts, all without any iron fist crap. The leaders of this project ought not to care whether the community is playing on their servers, but to seek satisfaction in knowing that people are playing Earth and Beyond at all. Anywhere. Period.
Earth and Beyond should be the community's priority. Net-7 entertainment should not represent the entirety of the community, as much as we've allowed it to. EnB will thrive in a sea of development teams, but it will surely fizzle and pop if left to the devices of a single development team. Development teams come and go. Eventually, the Sands of Time will have their way, even with this long-lived development team.
For anyone out there with the skills and the tools and the inclination to save this game and keep it running, the moral thing to do should be clear: With regard to ownership of content, always remember to give Net-7 Entertainment the same amount of respect they've given EA.
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I know from working with another emulator project (UO) that sudden changes like this often boil down to technical or human errors rather than abuses of power; and a hasty decision based on the former case is often regrettable in hindsight. So I would have waited to see if it is the former case (but as an innocent bystander maybe there's more context I'm not aware of).
It's none of my business really, but that also begs the question of why you put an internal dev team issue out there for all of us community members to read and comment on.
If every dev team member jumped up and left every time a new surprise inconvenienced him or her, I'm sure the project would run out of dev team members fairly quickly.
Thank you for the work you put into the game though.
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Me at a bar.
Me concentrating deeply.
My Earth and Beyond alter ego (Proteus Dok'uru).
My City of Heroes alter ego (Sapien Spider).
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The ubiquitous in-game character bio.
1) Right click a character, popping up a context menu.
2) Among the various options is "Profile" or "Bio". You choose it, and one of the game's familiar info screens appears; Except this time it has whatever that character's owner typed in for a bio.
This feature is common in MMORPGs both older and newer than Earth and Beyond. Trader types often use bios to list their prices and buy offers. Warriors often use them to proudly list their kills, not unlike fighter pilots painting kill numbers on their wings. Role-players use them as a means to describe their part in an online game's universe-spanning storyline and various arcs, both official and unofficial. And guild leaders and members use them as recruiting tools.
Unlike stuff you type in your "Captain's Log", bios could be public. Bios would add to the enjoyment for any play-style, so I would like to suggest to the devs that they consider finding a way to implement them at some point.
Thank you for reading!
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The above comments do not adequately qualify this great piece of origins fiction. As an avid science fiction reader (and fan of EnB's backstory), I give it thumbs up. Earth and Beyond is a story-driven game so it's good to see some original fiction pop up on the forums.
Irbis had a point about the lack of description (a last glimpse of Earth's murky rainwater beading up and streaming across the passenger window of the Sundari lift, for example), but on the other hand it's obvious (to me anyway) you were going for a brief political snapshot of the era.
I can tell you did your research and put some thought into character development. I could see this as a nice introduction to a series of longer stories detailing each of the three leads. (Hint, hint.
)EDIT: Descriptive writing, for me, often distracts me from getting the larger story down. It's normal for me to write something in the style you have here, and then go in later and add the descriptive prose.
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Right now I'd be happy if the EnB emulator devs turned their server back on.
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A few minutes before the server crashed I started having problems targeting asteroids and extracting ore.
Also when I realized the server was no longer responding to commands (I could move but there was no ion thruster exhaust, and I couldn't warp), I was unable to exit the game from the menu; I had to press ctrl-alt-del and exit via the task manager.
(Finally got a day off since last Saturday when the server was down all day. Maybe my days off are magically causing the server to go down!)
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im updating net7 now. been at it for a while actually lol.
almost done. should be up and playing in an hr i hope
Were you able to get into the game?
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Welcome back to EnB!
in Net-7 News
Posted
@Kyp Speaking of updates, I have a suggestion, would it be possible to point the in-game Game Manual and Knowledgebase browsers to the Net-7 Wiki? I know y'all are probably used to it by now and might not even think about it (that would be only human so I get it), but when you're coming back to the game it's actually a sad moment when its interactive parts like that don't load lol. Plus it might encourage more people to use and develop the wiki! (I didn't even know there was a wiki till I saw it in a Google search.)
I really like how you guys repurposed the Galactic Net terminals btw!