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  #49  
Old 11-16-2009, 07:58 PM
amphitryon amphitryon is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 274
The Emu team is seeking to avoid legal entanglements with SOE when it comes to client modifications because unlike the server, the client executable *IS* SOE code, as such is SOE intellectual property and the client's EULA is still applicable.The client simply does not belong to the SWGEmu team and the team holds no license to use the Star Wars IP. legally that is why the focus is on using what is already there, and NOT on adding brand-new things.

HOWEVER, the team is free to use whatever materials are already there, but in new ways. The good news is there is a LOT of stuff already in there to work with, and near infinite numbers of new content combination possible.

As such the team's conservative approach in regards of what is supported on the client is appropriate. Besides, there are 6 years worth of artwork, models, meshes, layouts. objects,sounds, etc. already on the client, so making use of what we already have in new ways makes a LOT more sense.

The $64,000 question imho is going to be figuring out a way to access all those post-CU assets,make them usable for development w/o having to take over responsibility for distribution of the files, and avoiding doing too much client side 'modding'

Here is the situation, as you know updates to the game come via the patcher in the form of TRE files that contain all the assets added/modified for that Publish. However, all the post-CU assets/objects are already on the client, contained within the SOE published TRE files. So, a way has to be divined that allows access to the objects contained within those TRE files to build a new TRE file (like a new Publish 15.0).

I am guessing the only way to do this is to create some kind of client-side app/script that gets pushed to the client via LPE to basically 'parse' the SOE published TRE files for the needed objects/assets, then build a new TRE file on the client that contains them. That way, the Emu team is not put int he precarious legal position of distributing SOE copyrighted material.

What I am suggesting is basically a 'shell' of the TRE Explorer app that can be scripted, basically feed it a manifest of what objects are needed from the SOE Publish 15.0 TREs and beyond. The user could provide a path to their NGE installation as the 'source' location and their SWGEmu dir as the destination where the new TRE file will be constructed.

Then original, team generated objects, like schematics and quests could then be patched into that new TRE file.

Obviously TRE Explorer works, so its quite possible to read the TREs, and extract objects from them, and its possible to write to them as well, so creation of new TREs should be within reach.