FHX Restoration (team)
FHX History
After the last official servers closed around 2008 there were multiple loose attempts of various people to reverse engineer the client.
hundreds of packets needed to be reverse engineered, client-side data structures parsed, spawns reconstructed and the client updated to a state that runs well on modern systems.
Cynicer, Robbie, Wildriff and b4ttl3m4st3r (Tobi) managed to deciphered a few packets over the years (around 2012).
But there was a major challenge in reverse engineering the custom encryption/figuring out the right order to load the client.
This topic was also discussed (multiple) times on various online forums, including RaGEZONE.
A breakthrough came in early 2018 when a developer named AcarX helped to reverse engineer the encryption and identify the first required packets to get the client to load the lobby.
He provided a sample project, which marked the start of the FHX restoration project.
In 02/2018 Lindia and Stephen created the FHX discord server and b4ttl3m4st3r (Tobi) launched the website FHX Restoration.
There were many (smaller) contributions to the development made by devoted community members. Many joined, many left, but a core team around the project stayed constant.
- Several FHX test servers during 2018-2022.
- FHX permanent live server in 01/2022.
Roles in development (up until today)
- Avigal: Reverse engineering and implementation of server and client-side features, worked heavily on the DB setup and the parallelization of code.
- b4ttl3m4st3r (Tobi): Worked on the web services and the server hosting (web site, login server, patch server, CI setup, maintainence, registration).
- Cynicer: Reverse engineering and implementation of server and client-side features.
Contributed to later extensions such as (daily quests, fame shop, spawns for level 65 update). Implementation and maintenance of the launcher, client side patches (fps improvements, crash fixes), and maintenance general infrastructure. - Lucas: Reverse engineering and implementation of server and client-side features, worked heavily on the DB abstration via the cache server, contributes useful tools like the tbl editor and a tool to setup the drops.
- Robbie: Reverse engineering and patching the client (offline characters, adding new dev commands. Creating new minimaps using the client and porting v1 assets to v3, setup a project to simplify spawns (SpawnCAD).
- Therendil: Reverse engineering and implementation of server and client-side features, worked heavily on NPC AI.
- Wildriff: Reverse engineering and implementation of server and client-side features. Overall research and proof of concepts on the client-side.
- Hagalaz (Maikel): 3D Artist. Contributed with items and textures such as (Founders Cloak, easter eggs, Hero's Staff, gemstone staff(32, 36, 40, 44). Exploring custom file formats to be able to import/export additional types of items.
- Dolor: Assisting in consolidation of lore (on the website). Organizing interviews, reviewing quests, content for events such as Halloween and fame shop.
- Bedric: Worked with client HQ textures, lore, mini-maps, translations and waysigns aswell as corrected (typos) ingame.
- Boban: Made videos need info of FHX in the early days.
- Sapphire: Implemented trade toggle function and looking into World boss (behavior) logic. Reworked rebel items and some soul items, (creating Hero's Wand). Reworked Dispel (and other skills), initiated a workshop to rework pvp (balance) interaction.
- Measuperbia: "Archeologist", author and editor on the wiki.
- Ryzhur: "Archeologist", author and editor on the wiki.
- Daniel (WizardOfTheHELL): Worked with translations, lore, spawn locations, and basicly being a walking encyclopedia for FHX.
- GreatX: Helped out with localizing legacy spawn locations for v1.
Current State
Most of the original features of the game have been reverse engineered and/or implemented at this point. Two bigger features, Hardcore Mode and Cooperative Skills, aren't in production use at this point.
(current) FHX development team
Developers (The Developer role is assigned to those who contributed to the software development of the whole FHX setup directly.)
Avigal
b4ttl3m4st3r (Tobi)
Cynicer
Lucas
Robbie
Therendil
Wildriff
Dev. supporters (Dev supporter role is assigned to individuals as acknowledgement of their community work.)
Bedric
Boban
Dolor
Hagalaz (Maikel)
Measuperbia
Ryzhur
Sapphire