Inventory 80 Limitations aren't real, heres why.

[Mirage]

You can if you're pro like me.

[Arcon]

That looked like it was working to me.

Then you were watching something else or have never played the game before. A private server tries to emulate the game. It's not just a server that responds with some packets here and there that the client can somehow interpret. To make a working private server, you need to know the server code, which you don't. We don't know many of the calculations done server side and how they're applied. Drop rate distribution, monster spawn rate/distribution, damage formulas, etc. Like this video, dancing Edge did 9000 damage and the mob gave 1500 EXP, so we know that damage formula and EXP formula didn't work. It showed that search wasn't working, as it showed 16 results when only one was found. It showed WS list wasn't working as it displayed Mercy Stroke without him having a Mandau equipped.

And that's just the bugs in one video. How does it handle missions/quests? How does it handle NPC interactions? How does it handle key item management? How does it handle mob behavior? I'm willing to bet the answer to all of those is "not at all". But I haven't tried it, so if you can correct me in that statement, go ahead.

How many bugs do you tolerate? How do you define working? A script that responds with a few select packets? Because that's pretty much all it is. If that's what you call a working server, then good for you, why don't you go play there for free instead of paying to play the real FFXI?

The people who wrote that obviously know a lot about the client and server relationship.

Only the client/server relationship has nothing to do with code. The people who wrote it analyzed packets and saw what the client was sending and what the server was responding with, and they emulated that. They don't need to look at neither the client nor the server code, ever. Most of what we know about the FFXI code is not from looking at the code, but from figuring out how things work in-game. Finding memory locations and sniffing packets is not code, it's looking up values and interpreting them. That's entirely unrelated. I can change my HP value in any game without ever looking at the (source or machine) code, just by finding the current value in memory and editing it.

[oliveira]

In defense of what Sarick said, you absolutely don't need to have the source code of anything to be able to understand how it works.

Look what happened with the XBOX360. It's encrypted with RSA2048 and it's hacked. Microsoft never gave anyone the source code for their kernel and hypervisor. Yet people dumped and did reverse engineer it, they found bugs and now the bugs are being exploited for hacking the systems.

Look what happened with the PlayStation3... Sony never gave anyone their signing private keys for PlayStation3 contents. Also they never gave anyone the symmetric signing keys for the PlayStation Portable "Tachyon" security chip nor gave anyone the PlayStation2 Magic Gate private signing keys... They're all out on the wild now because they all were into the PS3 System Software and people did reverse engineer it ... (Yeah, reverse engineering is how it's called and it's a science now. It's how anti virus companies discover how viruses work, too so it's not a bad thing, you see...)

Of course also punishable by the current law. The ToS for this service in particular has a lot to say about this reverse engineering thing ...

[Sarick]

What the .....

First and foremost, the "inventory limit" is due to the 32MB memory limitation on the PS2 and has nothing to do with PC or 360. 32MB is not a lot of memory and SE has to fit all client data inside it, this includes the two inventory lists. Now a single entry into your inventory isn't very much, a few bytes at most, but memory is so tight that their down to counting those bytes. As it stands they cannibalized the auto-translation system to be able to fit 160 items to begin with.

Yeah PS2 needs to die already, only way we're moving past this.

Well, answer this then. Why can we access each sack separately without issue ON PS2/PS3 hmm? All the mog safe, sack, sach, locker and storage can be viewed individually without long load times.

We already have access to inventory separately so they can also be loaded into inventory like a book changing pages. Don't give me this bullchat that the PS2 doesn't access all items in storage and sachs etc. Just because you have the main inventory open doesn't hide the other inventories from being accessed. Why?, If you own an EXCLUSIVE item it doesn't matter where you have it in those 80 slot inventories. If you already have it it won't let you get another.

This Indicates that the 32MB limit is there because it wasn't programmed optimally. Go look at the AH list tell me it has a max number of 80 items you can scroll down. Keep in mind I Have two working PS2s so I know exactly how those load.

Just another person who is blindly repeating what they've heard in the past.

Temps aren't even part of your inventory, their similar to key items and are only read when their is a need to. Eight temps is a single byte of memory.

So expert. How is it possible to have multiples of the same item in temp pool? If it's the way you say it is then some same items have different ID's for each of them. THEY STILL need to load the item data. You know the little thing that says yada yadda yadda this item is this, it does this and looks like this. That's a lot for 1 byte of memory.

The limitation is how many they load at once in the visible scroll box. It doesn't matter if they are one bit,byte or whatever its how they're loaded into those 80 item pages. Since we have no problem switching from inventory to inventory then we could stack them on top of each other like macro books. They wouldn't be totally contiguous but they could still be stacked into multiple pages this isn't a rocket science we already do it manually.

Your logic is also irrelevant because it's using the same old 32 MB it's always been using. Your logic is based like an obese person who is used to eating 2 pizzas per meal seeing a skinny dude eat one piece and saying "that's not enough." Computers have advanced with more memory. People who are used to having gigabytes of ram with no inkling of how much real information can fit in 1 megabyte. They're used to having all these big ram numbers and think because they have gigabytes everything needs to use of megabytes just to show a few low res pixels.

You do realize back in 1980's they showed people a single chip could hold the entire records of the library of congress right?

You can boot up an old DOS 5.0 system with 4 megabytes of ram and play games like flight sims, Doom, online multi-player even load windows. People have just gotten used to large portions. They no longer really care about how much space they use if they got the ram sitting unused they'll be sloppy with programming and optimization.

TY Oliveira Voice of reason. BTW. Was that you the other day on SMN when I was in that burn party? I think I recognize your name.

[Sarick]

Arcon as usual grasping at straws as a defense for your short comings. So this is your defense "over analyzing" what you saw in the video? You're totally missing the point by trying to lose focus on the original intent of my arguments. It still doesn't validate your argument because they have nothing to do with the original points I was trying to convey.

My first point was people figured things out without source code that allowed them to use/understand the game client. The second point was a client was functional on a private server.

The video clearly disproves your jaded outlook on what people know and don't know. The link provided enough evidence to counter the "without source code everything is speculation" arguments. It also invalidated that "There are no working private servers." I don't have to argue about the points you mentioned in the last post you made because they aren't relevant to those arguments.

Post insignificant arguments outside the point all you want. It doesn't make you any more an expert when you try to flip the subject material, It just makes you look desperate to change the subject to something irrelevant you can argue against. It's already been proven you don't not know what you're talking about and you can't concede to any form of evidence. Why do I need to beat a dead horse?

Suck it up, I'm going to move on about inventory limitations because there is no sense arguing with you about what has already been proven.

[Arcon]

Arcon as usual grasping at straws as a defense for your short comings. So this is your defense "over analyzing" what you saw in the video? You're totally missing the point by trying to lose focus on the original intent of my argument. It still doesn't make your argument valid because it has nothing to do with the original point.

What is my argument?

My point was people figured things out without source code that allowed them to use/understand the game client.

If that was your point you neglected to mention it anywhere. You went on for several paragraphs about how you can get game details from machine code, which is bullshit. All I did was debunk that one statement.

The second point was a client was functional on a private server.

Yes, you know why the client was functional? Because it was the regular client. They didn't build a new client for this, they use POL to connect to their server instead of the real one. So of course the client is functional, unless they fucked it up in the process. They didn't make anything, they just used what SE made for their purposes. The server was functional if you consider being able to send certain specific packets functional. It wasn't if you consider functional "being able to emulate FFXI".

The video disproves your jaded outlook on what people know and don't know. The link provided enough evidence to counter the "without source code everything is speculation" arguments.

I don't have a jaded outlook in that regard. I know very well what people know and what they don't. I fully disagree with what Mifaco said (which I said before), but your explanation was incorrect. You went on to counter his statement with saying that you don't need source code if you have machine code. Which is bullshit, because machine code is of no use for any sophisticated program such as this. Pretty much all we know about the code is from in-game behavior (which I also said before).

[Sarick]

What is my argument?

I hope you understand this.

In defense of what Sarick said, you absolutely don't need to have the source code of anything to be able to understand how it works.

She figured it out.

[saevel]

Good lord ... does this guy got an issue or something ....

Sarick you need to stop your making yourself look VERY stupid right now.

Inventory is stored on the server not on your PC. When you go to open a new inventory device that list is then downloaded. This is know to anyone who's used a latent checker before.

Temp items are just bit flags as someone else has already said. That means 1 bit per item, for 50 items your looking at 7 bytes of memory give or take, and that's for ALL temp items as their unique to each zone.

Now you may continue with your evil SquareEnix tin foil hat theory, but the reasoning has been known for a long time.

[oliveira]

Inventory is stored on the server not on your PC. When you go to open a new inventory device that list is then downloaded. This is know to anyone who's used a latent checker before.

Hm ... It's being said:
Limitations are related to how stuff is presented, not how stuff is stored.

One obvious reasoning for Square Enix design choices and shortcomings is that they are trying to run the network communications conservatively with their server so the networking costs and server loads are manageable.

They've stated it multiple times on several different occasions that the major roadblock on changing behaviors on this game and it's system is server load. And why you think you're blocked from spamming auction house searches or spamming viewing your moogle mail inbox ? It's annoying, but all these limitations boil down to what exactly you said. Everything is sever sided and changing stuff without method would either cause massive LAG or crash the server.

Still if the lists are limited to, say 128 items (I don't think it's 80 items as Sarick said but I've never tried to disassemble this game. Having the list be 128 slots at maximum and reducing a bit to make room for eventually raising it to the maximum value of 128 sounds plausible. 128 sounds like a "programming sound round number" and more in line to what I've seen with older games from SquareSoft.

Japanese companies have a tendency to stick to set programming standards even through different platforms (and I'm used to play around with stuff from CAPCOM lol so I know what I saw on their games, they DO stick with a specific style of coding regardless of the team who made the game).

The most important point on this thread (to me) is the fact that the PS2 never was any *real* limiting factor on any issues. And seeing how such an awesome system can be bashed like if it was the source of all problems on the world (of Vana'Diel) is just a shame.

Another point I'd like to mention regarding this thread, we're all pulling our arguments from you know where and due to that, I'd like to mention:

Chill, guys... Let's keep the discussion up though, it's being a interesting conversation.

[Demon6324236]

Maybe its because I don't care much but honestly it looks more like a pissing contest than an "interesting conversation" from here.