Offset - mq2ic is not necessary (1 Viewer)

[dannuic]

In light of the other thread getting shut down, I wanted to create a thread to specifically address some misinformation being spread. I have personally run mq without ic for 2 years, after I reversed it and pulled out what I thought might be necessary. Recently, we finally incorporated that into next, largely via work done by brainiac who is more familiar with the eq client than I am. It turns out I was doing far more than I needed to.
But to sum it up, here's words straight from brainiac's keyboard:

Just so we're clear, I've done a full analysis of mq2ic. Just because its closed source doesn't mean we can't tell what its doing. To be sure that I didn't miss anything, I reverse engineered the whole thing. I'm very aware of every single thing that it tries to do, both correctly and incorrectly. The amount of information that I've collected about what it does is large enough that I can't just regurgitate it on demand, I have to refer back to my notes and analysis. But if he (eqmule) wants to challenge me on that, I'm happy to oblige. This was something that took me several weeks (ask knightly/dannuic how long I spent on this if you don't believe me). Some times I had to take extra time to figure something out because it was just filled with pure "WTF is this shit?" moments.

I also found errors in some of the protections that could've caused the false reporting. Things that could easily be peer reviewed and corrected among the developers (but he refuses to do).

edit: I've offered to help on many occasions, all of which were rejected by eqmule. He just *does not* want to collaborate. He wants to do things his way, and only his way. His code is messy, hard to maintain, and filled with copy paste and spaghetti. MQ2Ic tries to support emu+live+test+beta at the same time. It is no wonder that it is full of bugs. Lets not even forget that it kills custom ui performance on live due to all the baggage its carrying in an attempt to be a gatekeeper to who can run and build mq2. Enough is enough. Mqnext is designed to solve all of these problems.

 

[brainiac]

(Not wanting to be taken out of context in the above quote; I *do* want to collaborate and encourage everybody to work together amicably -- the words are specifically about MQ2Ic which I have been pretty much against since it first came into being)

 

[dannuic]

(Not wanting to be taken out of context in the above quote; I *do* want to collaborate and encourage everybody to work together amicably -- the words are specifically about MQ2Ic which I have been pretty much against since it first came into being)

Yes, sorry. I didn't mean to post out of context. Collaboration has always been the goal. That's a huge reason next is completely open source and hosted on git to allow for easy contribution via MRs.

 

[Cybs]

For those of us in the community who never want to load MQ2Ic.dll on their machines ever again, thank you to each person working on MQNext. I was checking out the most recent build and it's working great!

You guys have clearly been working very hard together to create a solution for everyone and I think the more people start to use it, they'll see it's going to be a super positive experience!

• Most things are exactly the same, so using it won't require a ton of effort for anyone.
• The addition of Lua capability is very exciting because of all the many new possibilities it presents!
• The few things that I've noticed so far that are different seem like total upgrades (a "config" folder that holds all config ini files in one place for everything that requires an ini, a plugins folder to hold all plugins...it's very neatly organized)!
• Brainiac has made clear MQNext already offers at least as much protection as builds with MQ2Ic.dll and I firmly believe him. In fact - in my humble opinion - MQNext is actually safer because we no longer need to worry about malicious code being written into or out of any closed-source plugins that can't be easily verified by others. Code that was written to both secretly report players to a senior GM and compile people's personal information privately for the dev at different points in time.
• Error-reporting is completely optional and can be deactivated! This matters a ton to me. I was VERY happy to see that people can leave error-reporting on if they choose to or also deactivate it if they wish.

Not only is MQ2Ic.dll not required for MQ2 anymore, you guys have gone above and beyond to make sure the community is treated with respect (proper disclosures and options granted) and are making MQ2 better in the process for ALL involved! ❤

 

[Knightly]

Please keep this thread specifically about MQ2Ic. Questions and comments should be about IC itself or Next's replacement thereof.