It may of seemed that not a lot has been going on with updates, and you would be forgiven to think so.  The truth is, host updates have been very few, since Angus and I started with work on a more recent client released in 2004.

The current client dates from 2002, and was notorious for it's instability.  The 2004 client, although had more features, was somewhat stable.  Not perfect, but, stable.  Rotational movement, Damage text, are amongst the best of the features.

Why not just use that from the beginning?  Well, to put it bluntly it wasn't compatible with the 2002 host.  There are many differences in how the client and host communicate.  At first glance, unmodified, the client has scrambled ID's for items (eg 1173683) for all items.  Item stats were not being downloaded.  Part of the players/mobs ship name were being used for the actual name. And that's if it didn't crash upon loading.  Needless to say, at the time, it was beyond our abilities to fix.

After several server and client upgrades, we have both become very familiar with the workings of both client and host.  There was one part we both didn't touch, and that was client/server communication.

The constant crashes on both client and server last month, forced a re write of ASM that was written, when that was fixed, we turned our attention to the Ares client.

At first we tried modifying the client, and quickly agreed it would be safer to modify the host, leaving client stability intact.  After a lot of investigation, it was clear where the main differences were with the 2002 host compared to the host Ares was used with.  Mainly, and quite importantly, the construction of packets sent to the host were similar, but, essentially didn't match.  IT turned out it was quite easy to fix, and with a bit of the good old trial and error, Items started loading in our cargo holds.  This pretty much opened the door to a new usable client.

After dealing with Items and their stats fin cargo,  pile data (loot) was fixed, and items were now movable.  Next were lockers, this was also fixed quite quickly.  Names, specifically planet names, were longer, and that was soon fixed too.  However, maps didn't seem to load in Ares.  Being greeted with a wall (failed map load) every time you docked was disheartening.  We tried for weeks to fix this, and even called in a favour from Blitz himself.  Unfortunately, he seemed to believe we couldn't fix the problem without the source, and promptly shut that avenue down.  Justin aka Maudd, has also helped with this problem, and after several late nights, we quickly realised we needed more information.  Fortunately, Blitz had left a lot of debug in the client, and once forced to write this to a log, things started to look good.  We narrowed it down to a missing packet not being sent to the host.  This packet handled tile implementation and definitions.  After yet more investigation we managed to get Ares to send the packet, albeit forced.  Sat waiting for the client to download the map, and nothing happening, was frustrating.  We the took a look at exactly what was being sent to the host from this elusive packet.  Again, it was obvious the problem was with the client sending true player x,y coords, and not the players quad coords, which is what the 2002 host expected.  Fixing this was again very simple.  So we fired up the patched client, docked into the Starbase, and joyfully watched the map download.

That was quite a major hurdle, we were ready to throw the towel in and abandon the client.  Now we have a usable client.  There is yet more work to be done, fabrication, trade, and a few others, but, there is still another hurdle to cross.

As some of you may remember, from Ares and beyond, you had to face your target to attack.  This was all dealt with by the 2004 host.  Our host currently does not support this, so u can see mobs moving around, but they all face north, no matter what.  The 2002 client deals with all this on the spot, and we believe, once we know for certain what the Ares client is expecting, we will be able to sort direction.

All in all, it's now looking very promising for the release of the Ares client.  We still can not give an ETA of the release, but it is coming !!!

Supanova.