A Prototype, and What That Means

Read This First

The RF Online 1.0.5 server is an early prototype, at version 0.1.0. A real December 2004 client logs in, makes a character, walks around, talks, fights, casts and parties. Most of everything else is either unfinished, untested, or known to be wrong.

That is the honest summary, and it is the reason this page exists before any of the others.

What Works, and What Does Not

The changelog is the list, and it is kept accurate rather than flattering. Its Known Issues section is longer than its Features section on purpose. If something is not named there as working, assume it is broken.

Read it before you file anything, because a large amount of what you will run into is already written down.

Why It Is Like This

No server for this version of RF Online survives. Not a binary, not a database, not a configuration file. Every one of our other RF servers was built with at least some original server material to check against; this one had none.

So the whole thing was worked out from the client. What the client sends, what it expects back, what it does with a reply, and what makes it fall over. That works better than it sounds, and the core of the game runs, but it means parts of this server are careful guesswork. Some of that guesswork is wrong and we do not yet know which parts.

The game data behind monsters, items and stores is borrowed from a later version of RF, because 1.0.5’s own server tables are gone too. Names, prices and stats will sometimes be from the wrong era.

Which Episode Is This?

We do not know, and we would like to.

The client carries the version number 1.0.5 and no episode name. It is dated December 2004, which puts it before Giga 4. Our reading is that the 1.0.8 client is probably Giga 3, which would make this one Giga 2 or thereabouts. That is inference, not evidence, and searches for material this old keep coming up empty.

If you know what this build was called, or you were playing RF in 2004 and remember what shipped when, we would genuinely like to hear it.

Come Talk To Us

RF Online 1.0.5 is discussed in #rf-chat on our Discord.

Three things are worth more than usual here:

• What the client did when it broke. “It closed”, “it froze”, “the window went blank” and “the numbers were wrong” send us to four different places in the code.
• Anything about this build’s history. Its episode name, its release date, what was in it.
• Screenshots or files from the era. An old client, an old patch note, an old forum thread.

This is the version where a player’s memory is worth as much as a packet capture, because for a long stretch of it the memory is the only record there is.