Poll: Keep MQ "source only" or release precompile

younglove · Post by **younglove** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 10:03 pm

In a way I have to agree with the last 2 posts as well. My life outside of EQ is a bit on the Full side. Not only do I work pretty much full time in a job with a service oriented company and most of what I make goes to paying bills in order for me to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly and the various other ameneties that go with living in this world, I also am an active member of an international organization that is a non-profit and geared toward the study and education of the Middle Ages. I actually have responsibities within the local group here as well as within the state chapter as an officer and even for a volunteer organization it tends to take up a lot of my free time that I don't use for pursuing a personal business at home project or Eq. Therefore I really do not have the time to actually be able to compile what is needed with MQ but I would like to be able to see a released version of the compiled binaries and help make Eq be a little more exciting as it has been over the past few months I've been able to use it. Shoot and I was just getting to the point where I was able to actually come up with a working macro with MQ and I still need to get that to work properly.

However I certainly understand the reasoning behind keeping the binaries under the table so to speak. But there are those of us who, like myself who have used MQ possibley since the beginning who have no idea how to program or have such a basic rudimentary knowledge that that along with $.99 might buy them a cup of coffee at some fast food joint, would like to be able to play Eq once again with MQ with the compiled binaries readily available.

I'm probably not making any sense here but I hope that I am and perhaps I've not stepped too badly on any toes or offended those who wish to keep it just SRC. But it was asked for opinions and this has been mine.

However in the end it all comes down to the decision of those who have worked to revive MQ into something that works. And even due to my statement I'll defer to their judgement

Mckorr · Post by **Mckorr** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 6:18 am

Uh Uh, you can't use the SCA as an excuse. And I bet you didn't think we'd know what you were talking about....

Dirtface · Post by **Dirtface** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 6:19 am

I'd like to know the reasoning behind a source/binary decision. Because if this decision is based solely on "We dont want SoE to kill the project" then its really a moot decision as putting out one wont slow them down any more than putting out the other.

MQ was made for the public, keep it that way. I can compile, dont get me wrong, but as the previous posts have said, its a waste of time for the "safety" that you may think you're getting.

Fippy · Post by **Fippy** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 7:57 am

I aint a C++ coder so I dont count as a dev but in my opinion keep it Source only. Compiling aint that hard and if you dont want to go to the effort of either compiling it yourself or getting in contact with a friendly person who can do it for you then though luck. There is no denying the fact that a source only will cut down on the amount of people using MQ. Not wishing to offend anybody in particular but all the Lazy MQ users just wont be bothered to compile it. The not so Lazy ones wont have much of a problem. I mean all you need to do is beg\borrow\steal a copy of VC++ to compile it. How to do the compile has been explained elsewhere and if your having problems and you post them people will help you out. The only people that complain about this are just too lazy to do it themselves and they will not be missed.

As for me I dont actually use MQ anymore cause I only used it for 2 boxing with my druid and without click its easier for me to use the Xylobot MCS script.

Good luck to the new devs and if you do get /click working one day then ill be back :-)

azwildfire · Post by **azwildfire** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 9:47 am

as long as there are updates and someone is keeping all the other mods others do organized for various functions i say let us compile it ourselves...

even though i am clueless how to do it, i will figure it out

Shocks · Post by **Shocks** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 12:01 pm

I only need hte program to run some macros. Does releasing this with the code in a zip file make it any eayser really for soe to see whats up and fix it or can they just do what you all do to the eqgame.exe?
In any case PLEASE if we have some sort of break though let me know hehehe.. Thanks a ton I look forward to playing with any verson that comes out. If i have to compile it ill figgure out how to but would preffer not to have to. If any of this does not make sence well im in a big hurry no time to read over it. Thanks again to everyone that is forwarding this issue..

insanitywiz · Post by **insanitywiz** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 12:38 pm

It's not the difficulty of SOE to see what is going on with the program that prompts the need to keep it source only, it's the size of the userbase. Thus, the more people have to do to make it work, the less of a userbase, and the less of a problem SOE see's. It's basically a ballancing act, make it too easy and SOE is going to notice and target it again and again until it never works.

kaz · Post by **kaz** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 3:03 pm

The reason to keep it source only has nothing to do with SOE breaking it, as some previous posters have said.

The reason to keep it source only is to reduce the size of the userbase and hopefully draw less attention. That is a good thing, if your reading this and saying, "but I cant compile cause I have to educate ppl about the middle ages..." or "my wife wont let me" or "I dont know how and its not fair", well thats too bad, so sad, get over it and stop making excuses and learn how to be a part of the userbase that exists now.

Macroquest is single handedly responsible for more nerfs to eq than any other single thing or person out there that I know of, if you want that to continue and you want mq to go away entirely, keep on whining for binaries, keep posting your 101 step by step guides to compiling for the mildly retarded, and go ahead make your own binary distro and start giving it out like free money and see how long the updates continue...

younglove · Post by **younglove** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 5:24 pm

Mckorr wrote:Uh Uh, you can't use the SCA as an excuse. And I bet you didn't think we'd know what you were talking about....

heh I knew someone would know what I was talking about but being a Kingdome level officer as well as local officer does tend to take up a lot of free time for me.

But like I said I do also have a small business along with my regular job to contend with as well. But like I said in my last post I'd not mind it being open source again seeing as I dont have the time to do the compiling atm andprobably wont for some time to come. But once again as I said as well I defer to the ones who are doing their utmost to keep MQ alive

Mckorr · Post by **Mckorr** » Tue Mar 11, 2003 5:38 pm

Hey, I got a real war to worry about and I found the time. Huh, Kingdom level... guess I shouldn't mention my best friend is on the BoD, eh? And he has plenty of time for EQ 8)

Kint · Post by **Kint** » Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:44 am

source only. It was fun learning how to do it =p

Revenge · Post by **Revenge** » Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:14 pm

>It takes ALOT of progaming skill and talent to program ways to find and
> disable MQ and I doubt SOE will take the time if only 100 people use it.

I've seen it said over and over that "the fewer people the use it, the better" argument is being used like its the savior of MQ. Its not, consider this:

If there are 1000 people using MQ, SOE has tons of work to do. Sure, they may nab an MQ user here and there, but the load of users causes their GM's to only target the blatant ones.

If you limit the MQ userbase to 100 or less, then what do you have? Easy targets.. If I was a GM and knew there was a limited userbase cheating on my machines, I would seek them out, knowing there were few to nail I could get them all.

As a server admin, I can tell you from YEARS of experience that when everyone does something wrong, we give up and let them do it. When 1 or 2 or 15 people do it, we nail their asses. I've done it, I teach others how to do it. If macroquest limits their userbase, it becomes an easy target.

an EASY TARGET...

icon · Post by **icon** » Thu Mar 13, 2003 7:41 pm

..you guys don't seriously think the changes to eqgame.exe were specifically targetted at MQ do you? I mean really, MQ is very small in the scheme of things. The major nerf was almost directly solely at Offset Hackers... the folks at forever-hacking.net that *really* cheat at the game. In fact, the main thing that was implemented was the memory checking routine that scanned memory ranges for popular hacks, and if the memory was something it should not be, it crashed you.

I honestly don't believe that anything done by SOE was specifically targetted to stop MQ from working. May have been a pleasant side effect for SOE, but not their main goal.

I can see this slowely migrating the way SEQ went, when verant kept nerfing SEQ and WSEQ by changing the encryption every patch. Then agian, that *WAS* specifically targetted at SEQ and nothing else.

SOE basically did a all-in-one patch, nerfed everything they could all at once. They don't have the time to screw around every single patch and change things that drastically every time. Now when the forever-hacking people find a fix (as some of the admins already have) and go back into offset hacking, MQ will probably get nerfed again when SOE goes after the offsets again. MQ is getting nerfed as a SIDE EFFECT, regardless of the size of it's userbase. In fact, it's userbase is the main thing going for it. If SOE can see that a very HUGE number of people are using MQ, then they may realize that the features MQ offers are fairly necessary for alot of people to enjoy EQ.

Yes, I can compile the source. I've done C and C++ programming before. It would be quite easy. But I don't believe that I should have to download unneeded shit onto my computer, use up hard drive space for this crap, and jump through 100 hoops to use a damn program that's intended to make things EASIER to begin with. I mean geez. Then again, I don't play EQ anymore, and havent for awhile, so I wont be doing that shit either way. But my opinion still stands, I believe it should be kept as binary, because if you are seriously expecting SOE to honor some unwritten "userbase" rule you just invented, you need to lay off the crack.

Sorry if that sounded harsh, I have the highest respect for the MQ devs, and all you bitches know it.

Aaanyway, back to Shadowbane.

- Icon

kaz · Post by **kaz** » Thu Mar 13, 2003 8:48 pm

icon wrote:..you guys don't seriously think the changes to eqgame.exe were specifically targetted at MQ do you? I mean really, MQ is very small in the scheme of things.

Sorry to bust your bubble here but I recently got some information that SOE has been scanning memory and logging people who have been using MacroQuest for sometime (by specifically scanning the regions of memory modified by detours). So I decided to find out if it was true, and I went back and started looking through my old IDA databases, and heres what I found:

eqgame.exe, Jan, 08, 2003
MemChecker=00557137

eqgame.exe, Nov 19, 2002
MemChecker=00554422

eqgame.exe, Oct, 25, 2002
MemChecker=00550AF4

Thats as far as my exes go back, but thats what close to 6 months? I know a few people who have been banned in that time period for little or no reason and with the only thing in common being that they had been using Macroquest.

SOE has been doing memory checks for at least 6 months and not booting people to server or desktop but simply logging things, who knows what they logged and when. I have read several accounts of people who have been banned and say they have been told by GMs that there were logs of them using 3rd party programs.

Obviously they are not banning everyone who ever used MQ, but they log alot of stuff, maybe those logs are just sitting there on some server, and the next time you draw the attention of a GM he'll find them.

So the current MQ is totally safe.....or is it? They have been doing memory scans for months and Plazmic didnt know or didnt say anything if he did, what else might they be doing? Possibly scanning the list of DLLs in their process and looking for EQLib.dll? (the code could be written in 5 minutes)

Believe what you want, but I dont believe that SOE cares nothing about MQ, doesnt have the time to care, and never will......

Grumpy · Post by **Grumpy** » Thu Mar 13, 2003 8:58 pm

Turmoil Toad wrote:Now, here's a really nice tidbit: DXDiag reports that the files installed by the DX SDK (debug versions) run SLOWER than standard DX files. This is according to the DXDiag output. Can I tell you how thrilled I am with that possiblity? I'm sure raiding with 90 people in a corner trying to kill RZ and kiting 20,000 adds will be more fun than ever!

Anyone could have told you that, adding debug info to code always slows things down, that's why typical released versions of software DON'T have any/much debug info included. Makes finding bugs in released software tons o fun.

If you aren't going to actually be doing development on MQ, don't compile the debug info into the binary, and don't use the debugging versions of DX either. The devs include such things because they ARE looking for bugs, and need that sort of info.

In a perfect world, running the non-debug-enabled libs/code won't change the way it works, it'll just speed up execution (and make MQ have a much smaller footprint in memory when running).

Poll: Keep MQ "source only" or release precompile

Should MQ remain "source only", or should a precompiled version be offered?

I only need the program

The error is..

Re: My thoughts