eAthena

English Athena
Developer(s) The eAthena Development Team
Initial release 2003 (2003)
Development status Active
Written in C
Operating system Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris
Available in English (though many third-party translations exist)
Type Game server
License GNU General Public License
Website eathena.ws/forum/

eAthena, short for English Athena, is a cross-platform, open-source game server software for the popular MMORPG Ragnarok Online.[1] It is an emulation of the Aegis software created by Gravity Co., Ltd. that powers the official Ragnarok Online servers, and is used to run private servers.[1] This is accomplished through modifying the game client provided by Gravity to connect to private, instead of official servers.[1]

History

Athena (commonly called jAthena, short for Japanese Athena, by non-Japanese speakers) was a Ragnarok Online game server emulation project that was started in late 2002.[1] It was created because around this time, the official free-to-play Ragnarok Online servers exited the open-beta phase and became pay-to-play, and many players either did not want to or could not pay to play the game.

In late 2003, Applemod was created out of the original jAthena project by a developer that went by the handle AppleGirl, mainly as an English translation for jAthena with several other modifications. Another developer that went by the handle Akaru then modified AppleMod to create AkaruMod, with further changes. In early 2004, AppleGirl, Akaru and another developer by the name RoVeRT decided to merge using the AppleMod base and found what is known today as eAthena, as an actual fork of jAthena that would be collectively maintained. It has been under active development ever since. You can see one part of the eAthena timeline at end of the page. [2]

Specifications

eAthena is coded in the C programming language and makes use of the zlib and MySQL libraries. The actual application is split into three servers - login, char, and map, each of which serve a different purpose. Support for multiple map servers is also possible. Thus, while the individual eAthena servers are single-threaded, they do essentially have support for running on multiple processes, and even on multiple computers.

For storage of dynamic game data, eAthena can be compiled to use one of two different modes of database operation: TXT or SQL. TXT is short for plain-text whereas SQL is MySQL. SQL is the standard way of running the eAthena servers. TXT is generally used merely only for testing and development purposes as a quick and convenient way to get eAthena up and running without having to deal with any 3rd-party software, and is not recommended for live, production servers.

eAthena uses plain-text databases for configuration of static game data such as item, monster, and skill information, although some of these can optionally be configured to use MySQL instead. Additionally, eAthena features a fully custom, C-like scripting engine for configuration of NPCs, quests, warp portals, and monster spawns, among other interactive in-game systems.

There have been talks of and attempts at improving the eAthena code base for years, including full-scale conversion to C++ (called eAPP), replacement of the TXT system with SQLite, and replacement of the script engine with Lua, but none of these ideas have ever been completed.

Comparison with Aegis

eAthena has proven to be a solid, up-to-date, and very close emulation of Gravity's own Aegis software. This has been accomplished by analysis of both Gravity's Ragnarok Online client software and from Aegis itself, which has been leaked numerous times.[1] Most of eAthena's databases and scripts have in fact been converted directly from leaked Aegis packages.[1] eAthena's progress usually lags behind Aegis' an episode or so, as updated leaks are required to obtain new data.

eAthena is efficient, stable, and secure. Both Aegis and eAthena can handle thousands of players at once without issues, and security exploits that are discovered are quickly patched. However, eAthena interestingly has a number of notable advantages over Aegis, of which include the following:

On the other hand, on account of Aegis being a professionally developed software, it is likely to have greater stability and security than eAthena. Additionally, Aegis is Ragnarok Online exactly how it is and was intended to be, and while eAthena strives to be as close to accurate an emulation as possible, it is not perfect, and the game mechanics are slightly different in many areas.

As of 2010, there are approximately 500 private servers running eAthena, while there are around 30 official servers running Aegis.[1] Despite Aegis being frequently leaked and available for use, it is rarely used to run private servers, primarily due to the various advantages of eAthena over it listed above.

Legality

The distribution and running of private game servers such as eAthena is disputed in some countries due to copyright and intellectual property laws.

When private servers for Ragnarok Online client first appeared in 2003, Gravity took action. A prominent example of this is when they threatened the YARE (Yet Another Ragnarok Emulator) project, at that time the emulator with the largest user base, with a lawsuit if they did not shutdown by the end of the year. However, as soon as they did, other emulator projects such as eAthena immediately took its place. Gravity has since not taken action against private server servers.

Timeline 

eAthena History Guide
-Evera

Starting out in 2003, eAthena became one of the greater Ragnarok Online Server Emulators.
While the older dates are unknown, the majority of eAthena is well documented.
I initially included changes in developers, but it was hard to get information on.
 I included omniAthena because they too, are a part of eAthena history.

<------------- Release numbers note ------------>
-The original AppleMod/eAthena numbers were	-
-based on the Athena revision on which the mod	-
-was based on.    -
<----------------------------------------------->
November 18, 2003 - AppleMod 554a released.
December 5, 2003 - AppleMod 601 released.
December 24, 2003 - AppleMod 641 released, Christmas release
January 18, 2004 - eAthena 715 released.
February 22, 2004 - eAthena 817 released.
February 26, 2004 - IRC channel moved to irc.deltaanime.net.
<----- AthenaAdvanced Birth somewhere here ----->
-Lesson in history, AthenaAdvanced was a parllel-
-project to eAthena, another English Translation-
-to Athena. It proved to be a great rival and	-
-increased eAthena development rate. This time  -
-period was called the 'Emulator Wars'. After	-
-gaining some ex-YARE developers, they renamed	-
-themselves to omniAthena. (Thanks Mass_Zero).	-
Apr 24, 2004  - eAthena 947alpa released. Release pulled due to GPL issues.
Apr 26, 2004  - eAthena 951beta released.
Apr 26, 2004  - omniAthena 951 released.
Apr 27, 2004  - eAthena 953gamma released.
Apr 27, 2004  - omniAthena 953 released.
Apr 28, 2004  - eAthena 953delta released.
May 1, 2004  - omniAthena 959 released.
May 1, 2004  - omniAthena 962 released.
May 7, 2004  - eAthena '0.4.0' (see note) released.
<--------- eAthena 0.4.0 version note ---------->
-As you may have noticed, the few releases	-
-0.4.0 were following the greek alphabet. This	-
-became tedious, and the dev team concluded on	-
-changing the name to a numeric system.	The	-
-system started on 4 because the previous	-
-were regarded as the earlier versions, Alpha = -
-0.1.0, etc.    -
<----------------------------------------------->
May 8, 2004  - eAthena 0.4.1 released.
May 8, 2004  - eAthena 0.4.2 released.
May 18, 2004  - eAthena 0.5.0 released.
May 19, 2004  - eAthena 0.5.1 released.
May 20, 2004  - eAthena 0.5.2 released.
Jun 5, 2004  - Forums moved to eathena.deltaanime.net
Jul 23, 2004  - eAthena 1.0 RC1 released.
Jul 28, 2004  - eAthena 1.0 RC2 released.
Aug 4, 2004  - eAthena 1.0 RC3 released.
<-- Couldn't find RC4 Release date - RC4 was crap anyway, imho -->
Oct 14, 2004  - omniAthena/eAthena merge.
<---------- omniAthena/eAthena merge ----------->
-Ultimately, omniAthena merged into eAthena.	-
-Why? eAthena development picked up, as they had-
-to compete against omniAthena, who were	-
-re-developing the same aspects as eAthena, so	-
-they decided to merge back together, and become-
-a stronger entity in the 'Emulator Wars'.	-
<----------------------------------------------->
Oct 15, 2004  - eAthena 1.0 RC5 released.
<------------- End of Emulator Wars ------------>
-After eAthena RC5, you wouldn't see very many	-
-Peope using servers besides Aegis or eAthena.	-
-RC5 proved to be extremely stable, and was the	-
-standard of the time. YARE died out almost a	-
-year ago, WEISS was not heard of, Vidar was	-
-the same story as WEISS, but there were still	-
-some other RO emulator projects going on.	-
-Hostilities were gone though, until Freya	-
-branched off eAthena.    -
<----------------------------------------------->
Dec 7, 2004  - SVN Open to public
<------------------ Public SVN ----------------->
-When the SVN was opened to public, it meant	-
-that no more releases were to be issued in the	-
-old style. Now that we had more than enough	-
-developers to hold our own, we were no longer	-
-following jAthena, but having our own develop-	-
-ment.      -
<----------------------------------------------->
Nov 18, 2005  -  eAthena Preview Release v1.0 (PR1) released. Extracted from SVN 4021 (Thanks Haplo)
Period of peace.
<--------------- Period of peace --------------->
-Now we enter the period of peace, a name given	-
-to our current age. I named it myself, but most-
-users won't know the difference in time, so	-
-this name is meaningless to them. To the older	-
-members, you know what I'm talking about. No	-
-longer is eAthena struggling to roll out	-
-releases. No longer is eAthena a small group	-
-of a 40-person IRC channel. eAthena is now big,-
-and during this period, many advancements were	-
-made in other fields from eAthena members. To	-
-name a few, Sereon, and eAOS.  -
-Also, during this time, the eAthena population	-
-boomed. Now we are a huge, bustling community.	-
<----------------------------------------------->

http://www.eathena.ws/board/index.php?showtopic=91829&st=0


See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Debeauvais, Thomas; Nardi, Bonnie (2010). "A qualitative study of Ragnarök Online private servers: in-game sociological issues". Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games: 48–55. doi:10.1145/1822348.1822355.
  2. ↑ http://www.eathena.ws/board/index.php?showtopic=91829&st=0

External links

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