Lquan

Dear Friends: I expect to be out of game beginning April 4 for "some" days. Time away depends on what the surgeon discovers when he opens me up. I've some nerve issues in my left arm which are becoming worse over time. While they "think" the problem is localized to my elbow, it is also possible that direct inspection will determine that the nerve farther up is not responding properly -- in which case they close the elbow and do a detailed imaging sequence looking for spinal issues in my neck. [oh, lovely]. At the least, I expect to be out a few days due to pain meds and inability to use left arm. [I hate pain meds -- they interfere with my mental processing. The mild buzz of one beer is about all i can handle.] Well, I've little choice -- I'd like my fingers and hand to still be working in a decade -- and if nothing is done, they likely won't be. [Thankfully, I live in the US so the wait time to do this "not immediately essential" surgery is a couple of weeks, not months; and paying for the procedure will not be denied due to my retired status and pushing toward elderly age (unemployed old folks don't really need two well functioning hands, do they? Well, I'd not want to put that question to the NHS since I know they don't think wet macular degeneration in one eye is worth treating if you're elderly {I bet there's an exception to this for politicians}).]

There used to be a website which estimated the frequency of each drop from a particular mob based on statistics from live [I think]. Suspect that website is no longer active, and I recall seeing estimates as low as 5 percent (or even lower). Last I checked my maths, at 5 percent drop frequency, the expected number of items received by killing twenty of the spawn is one [1]. And the probability of getting at least one drop doesn't reach 50 percent until you've killed that mob fifteen times. If that sort of drop frequency applies to something like the Barrier of Ooze [level 7 shield], you have to kill the boss mob it drops from a LOT -- so much so that your 'toon won't need a level 7 shield any more because it'll have moved on to an 8 before you get one. Thus, only a collector will have one at all -- no one else will invest the time required to get one.

I'm told that the respawn time for Modi's Child is about 2.5 days. the group that last killed it has a huge advantage in that they know about when it will next spawn and can position their toons to intercept it. everyone else gets tired of waiting for many hours or days ... The Warder is apparently similar, although the time period may be shorter [one day]. The spawn site has been camped by one or more 'trigger' toons virtually continuously. [a trigger toon is a low level, low visibility toon always logged on and hanging in a location outside the reach of the mobs in the area. when the boss spawns, it kills the trigger toon and thus alerts its owner to log on the group to kill the boss for the loot, which is then shared out among the guild or group of friends.

all required files are found at https://www.net-7.org on the web, under heading "main" [the default] and "downloads" [see leftmost button on top button bar]. Earth 'n Beyond runs ONLY on Windows 7, SP 3 and later. Emulators for non-PCs are at user's risk and NOT supported. Only DX 9 graphics are required ... all graphics cards for past 15 years have supported this or better. read the relevant "Technical Support" posts in these forums. Especially recommended -- TraderMagoo's post "Net7Config.exe for Running Custom Resolutions" about setting up the game for multiple instances [running multiple 'toons at once on same computer] (a/k/a multi-boxing). If you encounter issues in installing or entering the game, please see these forums under "Technical Support" and browse the subjects available to find those nearest to what seems to be happening for you. If you don't find one that seems to fit -- start a new thread under "Technical Support" and we'll do our best to assist. GL and hope to see you ingame soon.

Occurs to me that in my 2.5 years since returning to EnB, I don't know who the Advocate is. Offhand, I don't see any link on the net-7.org [emulator] website that even tells us there is an Advocate ... For that matter, I also don't see any reporting of who the lead managers of various aspects of the emulator are. I know there are various groups of administrators and developers ... but, afaik, there is no organized way to find out who is who -- aside from the occasional special status tag such as Woody's or Kyp's. In the interests of sending to the correct person when something arises -- maybe this would be desirable ...

to everyone who did the "workaround" ... problem has been sorted. Please revert the change in your computer. [you don't want something nasty that could be avoided.

2120 gmt [420 est] -- apparently corrected now.

Starting? Considering all the hours you're online my friend -- I'd suspect you of reaching for the liquid tranquilizer bottle yesterday afternoon at the latest. [full disclosure with honest intent ... I went to grief therapy yesterday afternoon instead. Lord knows what I'll do today. ]

s/be ... "ask*; the players are very helpful." Player help requests usually begin in the "New Players" chat [text] ingame -- this is automatically enabled for all new 'toons, so you'd be ready to go. Hope to see you ingame.

Can only dream about such things -- we've McGill nearby so our lads are your flying fuel trucks. New plane is coming soon ... which we hope will be in service for decades to come.

Please tell us what you did to solve it so that the next guys with similar cases can use your solution. thanks

TraderMagoo's Tech post for "custom resolutions" is all I've needed to support multi-boxing. I have an old Win 7 Pro [64] box with an i3 cpu and 8 Gb ram ... works fine with three instances.

here's a link to the after V'rix conquest R4c sector map showing the V'rix nav points. {Many or most nav points in older maps are gone.} http://www.earthandbeyond.ca/sectormap/roc.html note that, last I looked, this Canadian site had two maps -- the old one {Roc} and the new one {R4c} with slightly differing names. Finding the new one isn't a slam dunk.

I'm a retired manager/executive, Mouli. I can read IP [intellectual property] contracts and I understand how they're written in the western world -- it's really, really simple -- everything other than the explicitly permitted uses is prohibited or exclusively reserved to the property owner. My understanding of the EMU/EA contract [which I haven't access to] is that the EMU's legal structure is limited to a non-profit -- any change voids the contract under which we can have EnB at all. {were I running EA, that's exactly how I'd have the contract written.} Of course, such a contract can be re-negotiated. If you've an organization with the funding to, in effect, BUY Earth and Beyond from EA. Since EA has no pressing need to sell, their price would be prohibitive. [I know a bit about negotiating, too.] *** As to your comments about China and Chinese practices -- you plainly haven't done much business over there. I and the people I worked with have. Theft of IP by Chinese entities is rampant and western copyrights/patents, even when registered in China, will not be effectively enforced by Chinese courts. I've many examples of this, including theft from global scale enterprises well able to afford armies of attorneys to litigate for their rights. Nationality of the global IP owner does not seem to matter as long as it isn't Chinese. {Trump's "trade war" with China is, in part, over this exact IP issue.}

My understanding from some of the DEVs is that EA owns the rights to the name, as well as the code. The EMU has very limited rights to operate a not for profit version -- it serves as an outlet for those who would otherwise be poking EA every other day to bring the game back -- which EA isn't going to do because of the cost involved. You can't, legally speaking, organize a separate corporation or other entity to take over or promote EnB. That would be theft of intellectual property which is aggressively litigated worldwide [except in China and then only in favor of Chinese entities]. Like it or not, we have to work within the confines of the contract with EA. Unorganized fan action in unofficial forums and venues, is, legally, the responsibility of those fans -- but the EMU can not in any way approve of or contribute to such actions. That would be another contract violation.

umm, oops ... Service Pack 3, please

nice detecting work, Vacassa. Wish I could be of further help and your situation is beyond my competence and experience ... let's hope that one of the DEVs picks up this discussion and knows what's going on.

these forums support searching [see upper right corner]. pls search for "INV-300" and read the posts about this error. I think I recall that most common cause is trying to start the game from the old EA provided EnB.exe file instead of the now required "LaunchNet7.exe" file. Other potential problems -- file must be manually set [in the folder containing this file] to run as administrator and to use Windows XP, SP 3 compatibility mode. The LaunchNet7 window that opens needs to have all four checkboxes [top left of center] checked. Also, your firewall in either computer or router may be preventing access. Server is up as I write this and reports that it was up when you posted.

another overlay type program that might be the problem is the one your graphics card may use to capture the action as a video -- AMD's ReLive, for example. {ReLive and similar graphics capture programs work by sending a detailed summary of the entire screen to the cpu to be saved as a file on disk -- this inherently uses the gpu's data path for ReLive while the cpu might be trying to send data for the next frame to be rendered to the gpu -- at best, it makes the whole process slower unless you have a very fast computer.} I wonder if you follow the setup instructions in TraderMagoo's post {on the emulator forums under "technical"} if activating the chosen window by clicking on the taskbar's button under your game window would eliminate this problem [in other words, use this method instead of alt-tab]. I've been using Magoo's method for several years now and the "only" drawback is that I sometimes forget which window is active and accidentally minimize it [after which ant-mouse lets me Restore it to near full screen size].

for the benefit of future people using this sort of connection, it would be helpful if you told us which VPN and which operating system you are using.

pls manually check in the EnB folders that the .exe files are set to run with administrator privilege. If memory serves, those files are LaunchNet7.exe and net7proxy.exe -- these are usually in the "Net7\bin" folder. If they are not, please right-click them and set them to do so. [Rather obviously, you have to have admin privilege on the machine to do this.] Do the same with the client.exe file found in EA GAMES\Earth & Beyond\release folder [it's probably under your C:\Program Files (x86) directory/folder]. Then, check that the square white "LaunchNet7 v2.2.0" screen has all four check boxes [just left of center top] checked. Be sure the 'sunrise' server is selected. If this isn't enough, please investigate your firewall(s) and anti-malware programs to make sure they are not interfering with the .exe programs. Hope this works for you. Plenty of other lads have recently gotten the game to install and run, so this CAN be done. Hang in there and get back to us with results, please.

I was told ingame that Damage, Inc. and Epic Gamers are the most active currently. No idea how many actives either has. Builders, Inc. seems less active lately. Just ask in New Players chat for an officer ... I suggest doing that during your most active time period to try and find guys playing when you play. total numbers in guild doesn't really tell us a lot since some guilds encourage players to have many of their 'toons in guild and others don't. [I have something like 31 total 'toons and I know several other players with many more than that.]

I hope you mistyped and have Win XP, SP 3 [three] compatibility mode being used. We've reached the limit of my knowledge of EnB interactions with Windows ... so I'll have to be a bit quieter now

to everyone who is having install issues: -- hang in there. Earth and Beyond does work. and, PLEASE -- when you post your problem, tell the DEVs what operating system you are running and which service pack. If you're trying to use a Windows emulator [on either an iMac or Linux box], they need those details as well. Yes, Earth and Beyond apparently still runs on Win XP [SP 3]. It runs on Win 7 64 bit [I'm less sure about 32 bit -- haven't had a 32 bit computer in over a decade now]. It runs on Win 8 and Win 10. Yes, you have to run the install under admin privileges [MicroSoft won't allow programs from outside sources to automatically select "run as admin" -- it's a fundamental safety measure]. And YES, after the program is installed, you then have to manually set the LaunchNet7.exe file to "run as admin" as well as run under the proper Windows compatibility mode {Win XP, SP 3 -- I admit that I'm unsure of this for Win 10 users since I'm refusing to use that operating system myself}. And yes, it is quite possible that your anti-virus or anti-malware program, including the firewall in your router or computer, is stopping EnB from communicating with the server. This can be fixed by creating an exception for the LaunchNet7.exe file in the preventing program. We're looking forward to seeing you ingame ....

thank you, thank you. More folk always welcome