We started this project to learn more about how the MMORPG Knight Online works. MMORPGs are very intricate programs requiring knowledge in many areas of computer science such as TCP/IP, SQL server, performance tuning, 3D graphics and animation, load balancing, and more. Starting with the original leaked source we have updated to DirectX 9, added function flags so that various file formats may be supported while remaining backwards compatible, and much much more.
This code is for academic purposes only! If you have questions, or would like help getting started, feel free visit the forums.
You will also need the following components installed, which can be installed from within Visual Studio via:
ToolsGet Tools and Features...Individual Components.
Use the search field to find them from there.
- C++ ATL for latest v143 build tools (x86 & x64)
- C++ MFC for latest v143 build tools (x86 & x64)
- MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (Latest)
Along with its accompanying SQL Server Management Studio.
Additionally, you will need to download and restore our database, which restores fine as of Microsoft SQL Server 2022.
This is a personal preference.
You can find Git for Windows here: https://git-scm.com/downloads/win
Or Github Desktop here: https://desktop.github.com/download/
git clone https://github.com/Open-KO/KnightOnline.git
If using Github Desktop, you can instead clone via File -> Clone repository... -> URL and then paste in our URL:
https://github.com/Open-KO/KnightOnline.git
Solutions are available in the root directory:
Currently we have:
Client.sln- for just the client project (WarFare) and its dependencies.ClientTools.sln- for just the client tool projects (KscViewer, Launcher, Option) and their dependencies.Server.sln- for just the server projects (AIServer, Aujard, Ebenezer, ItemManager, VersionManager) and their dependencies.Tools.sln- for just the tool projects (ItemEditor, N3CE, N3FXE, N3ME, N3TexViewer, N3Viewer, SkyViewer, TblEditor, UIE) and their dependencies.All.sln- all of the various projects.
At this early stage in development, the goal of this project is to replicate official client functionality while preserving accuracy and compatibility with the official client and server. This allows us to be able to side-by-side the client/server for testing purposes.
We do not intend to introduce features not found in the official client, nor introduce custom behaviour in general. You're very welcome to do so in forks however, but these do not mesh with our design goals and introduce complexity and potentially incompatibility with the official client. Essentially, in the interests of accuracy, we'd like to keep the client's behaviour as close to official as possible, where it makes sense.
We may deviate in some minor aspects where it makes sense to fix, for example, UI behaviour, or to provide the user with error messages where the client may not officially do so, but these changes do not affect compatibility while improving the user experience.
Pull requests for such changes will be accepted on a case-by-case basis.
As a hard-and-fast rule, this means we DO NOT change client assets or the network protocol between the client and game server (Ebenezer).
The client MUST remain compatible with the official client and the official server.
We do not intend to keep the backend servers compatible with the official ones (e.g. our AI server standing in for the 1.298 AI server and vice versa). This is largely more work than really necessary to maintain. Side-by-side testing with the server files as a collective is more than sufficient here.
Late in development when side-by-side development is rarely necessary, it will make sense to start deviating from official behaviour for improvements and custom features. At such time, we will welcome such changes, but doing so this early just creates incompatibilities (making it harder to test them side-by-side) and unnecessarily diverts attention when there's so much official behaviour/features still to implement, update and fix.
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The project is currently focused around supporting the 1298/9 version of the game. Version 1298/9 has most of the core functionality attributed to the game’s success. By ignoring later versions of the game we keep the system relatively simplistic. This allows us to strengthen the fundamental components of the game while minimizing the amount of reverse engineering necessary to make things work.
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We stick to the 1298/9 database schema. To ensure compatibility with the 1298/9 version of the game we do not modify the basic database schema. This means the structure of the database and how information is stored in the database doesn’t change while we are working. This could change once the core functionality of the 1298/9 is in place.
