[Neo]

There are a few PSO topics scattered about already, but I figured I should post a new one in order to garner more attention.

For a while now I've been wanting to try and play PSO on a regular basis. Since SCHTHACK turned to SCHT with their DRM-laden exes, the community, if there ever was one, has fractured irreparably over several smaller servers (each with their unique brand of forced shit), moved on to PSO2 or quit altogether. Tethealla is a simple Windows-based server you can run on your own machine and it works great, but I'd also like to have people to play the game with. People who actually want to play PSO. (I tried this as an experiment with friends a while ago with dwindling results.)

So I come to you with a humble question: How many of you would actually be interested in us hosting our own PSOBB server and playing the game on a regular basis? By which I mean, get together once every week (or every other week) over Steam or Skype or whatever, set up the game and enjoy a few hours of pure photon fun. The server would not need to be running 24/7, since the whole point is playing the game together as a group instead of power-leveling in single player mode, so what I'm really looking for is commitment. Commitment to a schedule and actual desire to get together and enjoy the game as a team.

Stuff I can bring to the table: I have my own personal exe and text mods that fix some of the notorious mistranslations and also the syntax/formatting errors introduced by the SCHTSERV staff when porting over the JP client (such as item description boxes and technique disk names); it's a work in progress that I keep tweaking whenever I find stuff that warrants fixing. I could host the server myself, but since I have a dynamic IP, that'd force everyone to do hosts file trickery every now and then.

[Morph]

I'm all for this, but I probably couldn't commit to playing on a schedule like that. When I played on SCHTHACK, I got up to level 107 or so, so getting back into the game is a little tough. I also play PSO2. One thing I never did was play the story quests though, and it's something I've always been interested in doing, so there's a possibility I'd show up for that.

I really like the idea though. Had I not played so much already, I would likely join you. If this was a 24/7 dedicated server though, I'd be more likely to jump on every so often, but not on any particular schedule.

On the note of Blue Burst, I need to get my hands on a clean copy of it. I have the SCHTHACK version from back when they provided a download and some patches for it, but it has the problems you mentioned like many others (ugly custom textures, GUI stuff, etc), and that really rubs the crazy purist in me the wrong way. I never got to experience PSO when it was still "alive", so when I started playing Blue Burst, I didn't know vanilla from custom crap.

[Aerosol]

Depends on what schedule you're talking about. Monday's are pretty golden for me, but the weekend is a bit more hit-and-miss. Progress will be excruciatingly slow playing a few hours at a time as well. What would it take to get a 24/7 Retro Server up and running?

[Infiniti]

Morph, on 04 November 2014 - 02:47 AM, said:

On the note of Blue Burst, I need to get my hands on a clean copy of it.

You can grab a clean copy of the files from here. It's what I used to connect to the server last night. I've been wanting a proper PSO 1/BB server for years but I'm guilty of not doing anything about it myself. So I'm all for this!

This post has been edited by Infiniti: 04 November 2014 - 07:58 AM

[Aesculapius Piranha]

Depends on the schedule. Since I am not in mainland US, probably not.

[SoullessSentinel]

I'd recommend Sylverant, an open source custom server software for Phantasy Star Online. [Google Code] developed by Bluecrab, one of the developers of Yabause as well as the current maintainer of the KallistiOS SDK for the Dreamcast.

Currently, the PC version of PSO v2, both Dreamcast versions, and the GameCube version are supported, no PSOBB yet but it's still under active development, and the beauty of open source software is anybody with knowledge of the server's workings can contribute. The developer would prefer that people contribute and play on the Sylverant hosted server as to avoid fragmenting the already small amount of PSO players, but when PSOBB support gets completed, it would lower the barrier to entry.

I connect to this myself on the PC and Dreamcast occasionally, Installing the PC version of PSOv2 isn't that hard, if you can find it.

If there's demand for it, I could put together an installation package for a pre-patched version that connects to this server as I currently have the files laying around on my external drive.

Edit: Typo's

This post has been edited by SoullessSentinel: 04 November 2014 - 09:08 AM

[Neo]

Aesculapius Piranha, on 04 November 2014 - 07:29 AM, said:

Depends on the schedule. Since I am not in mainland US, probably not.

I'm on GMT+0, so this shouldn't be an issue. I figure there's got to be some timeslot, probably sometime during the weekend, where it's okay for everybody. People get together to watch livestreams and stuff all the time regardless of timezones, so willingness to go out of one's way to play a game with friends is really what I'm looking for here.

Morph, on 04 November 2014 - 02:47 AM, said:

When I played on SCHTHACK, I got up to level 107 or so, so getting back into the game is a little tough.

This used to bug me as well, but I've since then adjusted to the idea of starting a game over and over and just having fun; I guess a bit of the speedrunning community's spirit has rubbed off on me. This does mean that the uber-rare weapons and Ultimate mode are nigh-inaccessible, though.

Morph, on 04 November 2014 - 02:47 AM, said:

On the note of Blue Burst, I need to get my hands on a clean copy of it. I have the SCHTHACK version from back when they provided a download and some patches for it, but it has the problems you mentioned like many others (ugly custom textures, GUI stuff, etc), and that really rubs the crazy purist in me the wrong way. I never got to experience PSO when it was still "alive", so when I started playing Blue Burst, I didn't know vanilla from custom crap.

Aye, this is a bit of a mess. There are actually two versions of the game, the US one and the JP one, with the JP version having received more updates, quests, items, etc. The version popularized by SCHTHACK et al. is actually a crazy mixed version which is essentially the JP version patched to have all the text back in English. Due to this, there is no true "vanilla" version, and since the official servers are long gone, there's also no way to get the original files for either version (Episode 4 did not come in the installer, and was downloaded from the game via the patch server.)

Back when tried to coax my friends into playing, I went on a bit of a scavenger hunt and the package from http://edenserv.net seems to be mostly fine -- just a dumb custom billboard which can be removed by deleting the lobby_billboard.xvm file -- and then the text and the client don't matter because I have my own files for that.

SoullessSentinel, on 04 November 2014 - 07:42 AM, said:

I'd recommend Sylverant, an open source custom server software for Phantasy Star Online [...] no PSOBB yet but

Did you even read the title.

[SoullessSentinel]

I did, but the PSO community is already heavily fragmented so why make it worse by spinning up yet another private server? It's difficult to find players on all of the currently available servers as it is. Granted the lack of support for PSOBB isn't ideal, but the PC version of PSOv2 does work fully and PSOBB support is a planned feature and some code for it exists, it just doesn't quite work yet.

[Azu]

Seem like a nice server software, but I'd rather wait for BB support.

[Lobotomy]

I will totally be down if new content generation is possible.

[SoNick]

Neo, on 03 November 2014 - 11:11 PM, said:

Since SCHTHACK turned to SCHT with their DRM-laden exes, the community, if there ever was one, has fractured irreparably over several smaller servers (each with their unique brand of forced shit), moved on to PSO2 or quit altogether.

That's really unfortunate!! I've been holding off on playing anything PSO ever since PSO 2 was first announced, but with the chances of an official English translation sliding more and more into the "snowball's chance in hell" territory I've been tempted to download Blue Burst on my home computer and start playing again. If schthack has gone to crap then I may have to re-think that decision; while it's fun playing with people you know, for me part of the fun is meeting random new people!

[Kharen]

I've been wanting to try PSO, whether it's the Blue Burst version or the original, for some time. Unfortunately, between college classes and issues at home, while I'd be willing to play often, a steady schedule would be rather difficult. If there was any way to have a 24/7 server, or even just a server with a set schedule for when it's up, such as 8:00 to 10:30 or something, with longer hours on weekends, I'd be likely to show up often for more random meetups instead of set schedule groups.

Could that be a possibility, having the server on a daily schedule with messages or reminders in-game of when the server's off for the night? If so, then that would be really convenient, even if it wasn't 24/7 online. Speaking of possibilities, what kind of stuff could be done with a private server of a dead MMO? Would it be possible to expand the game content with new areas, enemies, and items over time? It could be really cool if we had some sort of way to make new stuff and send it over to be added to the game.

[Aerosol]

Oh yes, new PSO content would be superb.

[Morph]

I believe there's actually a quest editor floating around (likely on the schthack forum), but other than that I don't think there have been significant strides in PSO content development. At the very least, it uses nj (Ninja) format models, which are relatively well known.

[SoullessSentinel]

There quest format is fully understood and there is an editor that supports most versions of PSO. IIRC, the textures are the standard Dreamcast PVR format and the music ADX so that should all be editable with currently existing tools