Quick RF progress update

As of today, most of the RF family emulators are now released. This includes the latest 2232 with the AI features, with the same bar met in 415, 455, and 1.5b.

The emulators for 215, 216, and Giga4 have not been fully updated with all the latest features yet. I am going to work on that now that 1.5 is published. I should have all of those updates done by tonight.

Up until now, most of the work has been focused around the core gameplay and existing features. The goal was to make the game function, not necessarily perfectly optimized. I would say we have now met and likely exceeded that bar.

The 2232 version continues to be the main base. 415 and 455 inherit core fixes from that, then the same for 216/215/giga4.

Once all of the versions are in sync with the latest baseline established in 2232-v0.6.0, work will move more into customization, antihack, and player experience.

As a reminder, although the game is very functional, it is not considered ready for production until v1.0.0. You may run into bugs and other game-breaking aspects until then.

I decided to make this post to 1) start documenting my thoughts throughout the projects as a personal blog, and 2) to encourage people to take the time to utilize the forum. Forums died because people stopped spending time on them for deeper discussions. If you want to bring forums back, you have to be a part of them instead of watching from the side. I encourage everyone to start utilizing the forum to help discuss different aspects of the project, to share ideas, feature requests, and anything else that comes up along the way.

If you have any specific questions for me about RF specifically, feel free to ask them here. Other games have their own sections, and we have the Lobby for everything else.

Hello, I'd like to ask how I can get the matching client download.

This page will explain the clients you need for each version:

https://oldschoolops.com/docs/games/rf/game-clients/

is this the real ron from rf.dev? you're the man!! thanks for doing this out of love. keep it up. anyway, i cant send you pm.

Yep, that's me. I'm glad people are enjoying the work so far. It is good to be back.

I'm working on fixing the messages system. Try again in about a hour and it will be fixed. You'll know its fixed once you check my profile and see a Message button.

Edit: Messages should work now.

Thanks a lot for your contribution to RF

I got latest 4.55 out last night. Today I'll get 2.2.3.2, 4.15, and 1.5 synced, then work on clearing out that next round of new bugs.

Safe to say that moving forward, 4.55 will become the focus, and I'll derive fixes for the other versions from there.

Progress slowed down slightly this week as I get ready for my court hearing tomorrow regarding my car. Spending most of today prepping, that will demand all of my time tomorrow, and then I'll be home late in the evening.

4.55 will still be the main RF game but I've also shifted focus to Studio and the tooling around the games, to help make it easier for people to customize everything. I spent most of the past few days prepping Studio v1.3. It'll be out really soon as well.

Thank you so much, Ron!

Ron, could you tell me how to add shop coins to the cash shop? Also, how do I stop NPCs from being stacked inside one another?

Depends on nation code but it’s in BILLING.dbo.tbl_UserStatus.Cash for the account id (including the “!”); shows immediately. Gold points come from the Gold Capsule items.

NPC stacking: each shop NPC comes from a *sdXXXXX box in the map’s .spt on the server; two boxes with the same position stack.

To sort it edit the last row of one box’s -node_tm to a free spot (get coordinates with %xyz) and restart the zone.

This is something I still need to improve. Currently, log in to the gamecp with an admin account, go to the staff area, search an account, load its profile, and then you will see the button for adding credits. It uses that value ingame for cash shop currency.

Hiya Ron, I ran an RF private server nearly 20 years ago, and finding this project has me pretty damn excited. I’d love to build something substantially expanded from the original game, eventually as a public server. If that proves impractical, a private world with friends and AI populations would still be something I’d enjoy pursuing.

I’ve been digging through the docs and releases, especially Studio and the population tools. Before I get too carried away, I’m trying to figure out how far we could actually take development ourselves.

Is the server/client source available, or something you’re planning to release or offer access to? Same question for Studio. I found the Lua scripts and data, but couldn’t find the core source or licensing terms. If source access is possible, are there build instructions and source versions matching the releases?

The big question for me is where customization stops. Could we build entirely new progression systems, persistent properties on individual items, new combat mechanics or new UI windows? Or are we working within the existing systems exposed through Lua and Studio? Is there an SDK or extension path for anything deeper, including new client/server messages?

I’d also like to understandd what you allow regarding public hosting, modified builds and redistribution, and which original RF assets/data we’d need to handle separately. Can the stack keep running independently with the optional online/update services turned off, or are there ongoing dependencies we should know about?

Lastly, I saw your newer post about shifting focus to 4.55. Would you recommend that over 2.2.3.2 for a project focused on substantial customization? And what are the biggest things you still want to resolve before calling it production-ready at 1.0?

Not looking to pin you to a release date. I’m just trying to choose a foundation we can really build on. Appreciate any pointers, and it’s genuinely great to see this much work still happening around RF.

Sorry for the delay. I've had a really busy week.

I'm glad to see more people getting excited about this. I've put a lot of passion into it and I hope it shows.

The project is currently still closed source. I am still debating on what to do long term. So far the open development process has helped a lot. You can use the website API to report bugs easier with AI tools so I think that has helped a lot. Binaries are free for personal and educational use.

My focus has been the server-side operations and dev tooling workflow. Most of what you want to do is possible even if I don't currently have my own tool to do it. A lot of what you want to do would require you to build a custom client or add your own hooks into an existing one. As far as the server is concerned, customization is pretty much unlimited when it comes to the custom scripts. You can define your own protocol messages without needing source.

Publicly hosting is at your own risk. I can't advise you on how to handle that. My project is for educational and personal use. I suggest contacting an attorney before running a public service with games that use copywritten assets.

Nothing is "production ready" until at least v1.0. No ETA prior to that, sorry.

Best way to help is to test and report bugs on the website, report and vote on ideas, join the forum, and encourage others to do the same.