MOSS
The following things could be improved, according to me, in the area of MOSS documentation (particularly MOSS/setup).
- 1. It needs to clearly stated that global_sdl_manager needs to be run AFTER starting the server. I've fixed this already on the wiki, but the main setup instructions still don't indicate it clearly.
- 2. The different roles of the servers should be quickly but concisely explained, to aid debugging; I myself didn't know what the Gatekeeper server did until a'moaca' explained it to me.
- 3. A list of files to put under file/Client/External needs to be clearly given. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to put, since Gehn, Minkata and TOC all used different file sets. I finally settled on the Gehn model since it worked and my client was the H'uru client. However, this list would probably depend on whether the client is from H'uru or OpenUru.org.
- 4. It should be stated that it's normal for MOSS not to find SecurePreloader.mbm when connecting with an H'uru client (I don't know if this should be written under MOSS or CWE, since CWE is creating the "problem" but MOSS is reacting to it).
- 5. Manifest Creator creates the manifest from a current client installation. It would thus be best if it was pointed to an already working client setup for this shard, instead of the default Uru Live install (this will automatically gzip the appropriate clients). Maybe this should be made clearer?
- 6. The files to be renamed and moved around should be explicitly named; I guessed at it, since the filenames are pretty self-explanatory.
The following corrections I'm suggesting seem to apply to every fork of the CWE client.
- 1. The AuthFiles used (Python and SDL) shoudn't come from AuthFiles.zip (reference purpose should be explicitly stated under MOSS/Setup, for example), but instead should be compiled each time from the appropriate repository (H'uru, OpenUru.org...).
- 2. Standard versions of PhysX, DirectX and Visual Studio Redistributable have to be established. I ran into problems during installation because one of the installers (I think it was dxwebsetup.exe) refused to install because a newer version was already installed. I'm not sure if the GoW and OU are using the same versions of these installers, but if they aren't, I think it might be to their advantage to determine the "reference" installers, and provide direct links to those files.
- 3. Maybe a clear guide on licensing? I wasn't completely sure of what to put, so I kept all the COPYING files everywhere, for example. Must these be made available somewhere? The responsbilities of a shard owner should be more clearly outlined, in my opinion (MOSS/Setup has a few things to say on the subject, but I'm not sure it covers everything). In my case, I hoped I'd done everything right, but just re-reading those instructions has shown me I need to link to the actual changeset of the repository I used. Oops.
Finally, this is just for the H'uru fork of CWE.
- 1. The old python27 branch should be removed, and the section "Running Instructions" needs to be updated in the README.
- 2. It should be made clear that the "-LocalData" trick doesn't work for the External client. This had me stuck a long time, until I took a peek at the source code.
- 3. The new SecurePreloader mechanism should be explained, and the fact that it still allows for backward-compatibility. Maybe this should be in the README, or maybe in a separate MOSS<->H'uru CWE article.
- 4. Is there a difference between /LocalData and -LocalData? I only tried the latter, but in several places, I have seen /LocalData stated instead.
- 5. It needs to be specified that server.ini HAS to be encrypted for the external client, but NOT for the internal client.
- 6. server.ini seems to use the standard MOULa generators for the keys it uses. Maybe it should be explicitly written somewhere that, when converting keys from MOSS for example, the converted keys need to use the appropriate encryption. Or, alternatively, the encryption option could be coded into server.ini.
- 7. How far is this issue from being closed? Everything worked fine for me (but I only built the client)...
- 8. When I first built the client, everything went fine. But I guess I installed other DirectX stuff later because eventually, I had to manually specify the locations of the DirectX files.