newserv

newserv is a game server and proxy for Phantasy Star Online (PSO).

This project includes code that was reverse-engineered by the community in ages long past, and has been included in many projects since then. It also includes some game data from Phantasy Star Online itself; this data was originally created by Sega.

This project is a rewrite of a rewrite of a game server that I wrote many years ago. So far, it works well with PSO GC Episodes 1 & 2, and lobbies (but not games) are implemented on Episode 3. Some basic functionality works on PSO PC and PSO BB, but there are probably still some cases that lead to errors (which will disconnect the client). The proxy works well with PSO GC and PSO BB.

Feel free to submit GitHub issues if you find bugs or have feature requests. I'd like to make the server as stable and complete as possible, but I can't promise that I'll respond to issues in a timely manner.

Future

This project is primarily for my own nostalgia; I offer no guarantees on how or when this project will advance.

Current known issues / missing features:

• Test all the communication features (info board, simple mail, card search, etc.)
• The trade window isn't implemented yet.
• PSO PC and PSOBB are not well-tested and likely will disconnect when clients try to use unimplemented features. Only GC is known to be stable and mostly complete.
• Patches currently are platform-specific but not version-specific. This makes them quite a bit harder to use properly.
• Find a way to silence audio in RunDOL.s. Some old DOLs don't reset audio systems at load time and it's annoying to hear the crash buzz when the GC hasn't actually crashed.

Usage

Currently this code should build on macOS and Ubuntu. It will likely work on other Linux flavors too. It should work on Windows as well, but I haven't tested it - the build process could be very manual.

There is a probably-not-too-old macOS release on the newserv GitHub repository (look in the right sidebar).

If you're running Linux or want to build newserv yourself, here's what you do:

1. Make sure you have CMake and libevent installed. (brew install cmake libevent on macOS, sudo apt-get install cmake libevent-dev on most Linuxes)
2. Build and install phosg (https://github.com/fuzziqersoftware/phosg).
3. Optionally, install resource_dasm (https://github.com/fuzziqersoftware/resource_dasm). This will enable newserv to load DOL files on PSO GC clients. PSO GC clients can play PSO normally on newserv without this.
4. Run cmake . && make on the newserv directory.

After building newserv or downloading a release, do this to set it up and use it:

1. In the system/ directory, make a copy of config.example.json named config.json, and edit it appropriately.
2. Run ./newserv in the newserv directory. This will start the game server and run the interactive shell. You may need sudo if newserv's built-in DNS server is enabled.
3. Use the interactive shell to add a license. Run help in the shell to see how to do this.

Installing quests

newserv automatically finds quests in the system/quests/ directory. To install your own quests, or to use quests you've saved using the proxy's set-save-files option, just put them in that directory and name them appropriately.

Standard quest file names should be like q###-CATEGORY-VERSION.EXT; battle quests should be named like b###-VERSION.EXT, and challenge quests should be named like c###-VERSION.EXT. The fields in each filename are:

• ###: quest number (this doesn't really matter; it should just be unique for the version)
• CATEGORY: ret = Retrieval, ext = Extermination, evt = Events, shp = Shops, vr = VR, twr = Tower, gov = Government (BB only), dl = Download (these don't appear during online play), 1p = Solo (BB only)
• VERSION: d1 = Dreamcast v1, dc = Dreamcast v2, pc = PC, gc = GameCube Episodes 1 & 2, gc3 = Episode 3, bb = Blue Burst
• EXT: file extension (bin, dat, bin.gci, dat.gci, bin.dlq, dat.dlq, or qst)

There are multiple PSO quest formats out there; newserv supports most of them. Specifically, newserv can use quests in any of the following formats:

• bin/dat format: These quests consist of two files with the same base name, a .bin file and a .dat file.
• Unencrypted GCI format: These quests also consist of a .bin and .dat file, but an encoding is applied on top of them. The filenames should end in .bin.gci and .dat.gci. (Note that there also exists an encrypted GCI format, which newserv does not support.)
• Encrypted DLQ format: These quests also consist of a .bin and .dat file, but download quest encryption is applied on top of them. The filenames should end in .bin.dlq and .dat.dlq.
• QST format: These quests consist of only a .qst file, which contains both the .bin and .dat files within it.

When newserv indexes the quests during startup, it will warn (but not fail) if any quests are corrupt or in unrecognized formats.

If you've changed the contents of the quests directory, you can re-index the quests without restarting the server by running reload quests in the interactive shell.

All quests, including those originally in GCI or DLQ format, are treated as online quests unless their filenames specify the dl category. newserv allows players to download all quests, even those in non-download categories.

Patches and DOL files

Everything in this section requires resource_dasm to be installed, so newserv can use the PowerPC assembler and disassembler from its libresource_file library. If resource_dasm is not installed, newserv will still build and run, but these features will not be available.

You can put patches in the system/ppc directory with filenames like PatchName.patch.s and they will appear in the Patches menu for PSO GC clients that support patching. Patches are written in PowerPC assembly and are compiled when newserv is started. See system/ppc/WriteMemory.s for a commented example of such a function.

You can also put DOL files in the system/dol directory, and they will appear in the Programs menu. Selecting a DOL file there will load the file into their GameCube's memory and run it, just like the old homebrew loaders (PSUL and PSOload) did. For this to work, ReadMemoryWord.s, WriteMemory.s, and RunDOL.s must be present in the system/ppc directory. This has been tested on Dolphin but not on a real GameCube, so results may vary.

I mainly built the DOL loading functionality for documentation purposes. By now, there are many better ways to load homebrew code on an unmodified GameCube, but to my knowledge there isn't another open-source implementation of this method in existence.

Chat commands

The server's shell supports a variety of administration commands. If the interactive shell is enabled, you can enter these commands at any time, even if the prompt isn't visible. Run help in the server's shell to see all of the commands and how to use them.

newserv also supports a variety of commands players can use via the chat interface. These commands work on the game server (that is, in lobbies and games hosted by newserv); they do not work on the proxy server. The chat commands are:

• Information commands

  • $li: Shows basic information about the lobby or game you're in.
  • $what: Shows the type, name, and stats of the nearest item on the ground.

• Personal state commands

  • $arrow <color-id>: Changes your lobby arrow color.
  • $secid <section-id>: Sets your override section ID. After running this command, any games you create will use your override section ID for rare drops instead of your character's actual section ID. To revert to your actual section id, run $secid with no name after it.

• Blue Burst player commands

  • $bbchar <username> <password> <1-4>: Use this command when playing on a non-BB version of PSO. If the username and password are correct, this command converts your current character to BB format and saves it on the server in the given slot.
  • $edit <stat> <value>: Modifies your character data.
  • $item <data>: Sets the next item to be dropped from an enemy or box.

• Game state commands

  • $maxlevel <level>: Sets the maximum level for players to join the current game.
  • $minlevel <level>: Sets the minimum level for players to join the current game.
  • $password <password>: Sets the game's join password. To unlock the game, run $password with nothing after it.

• Cheat mode commands

  • $cheat: Enables or disables cheat mode for the current game. All other cheat mode commands do nothing if cheat mode is disabled.
  • $infhp / $inftp: Enables or disables infinite HP or TP mode. Applies to only you. In infinite HP mode, one-hit KO attacks will still kill you.
  • $warp <area-id>: Warps yourself to the given area.
  • $next: Warps yourself to the next area.
  • $swa: Enables or disables switch assist. When enabled, the server will attempt to automatically unlock two-player doors in solo games if you step on both switches sequentially.

• Configuration commands

  • $event <event> / $allevent <event>: Sets the current holiday event in the current lobby, or in all lobbies. Holiday events are documented in the "Using $event" item in the information menu.
  • $song <song-id>: Plays a specific song in the current lobby (Episode 3 only).

• Administration commands

  • $ann <message>: Sends an announcement message. The message text is sent to all players in all games and lobbies.
  • $ax <message>: Sends a message to the server's terminal. This cannot be used to run server shell commands; it only prints text to stderr.
  • $silence <identifier>: Silences a player (remove their ability to chat) or unsilences a player. The identifier may be the player's name or guild card number.
  • $kick <identifier>: Disconnects a player. The identifier may be the player's name or guild card number.
  • $ban <identifier>: Bans a player. The identifier may be the player's name or guild card number.

Using newserv as a proxy

If you want to play online on remote servers rather than running your own server, newserv also includes a PSO proxy. Currently this works with PSO GC and may work with PC; it also works with some BB clients in specific situations.

To use the proxy, add an entry to the ProxyDestinations dictionary in config.json, then run newserv and connect to it as normal (see below). You'll see a "Proxy server" option in the main menu, and you can pick which remote server to connect to.

A few things to be aware of when using the proxy server:

• On PC and GC, using the Change Ship or Change Block actions from the lobby counter will bring you back to newserv's main menu, not the remote server's ship select. You can go back to the server you were just on by choosing it from newserv's proxy server menu again.
• The remote server will probably try to assign you a guild card number that doesn't match the one you have on newserv. The proxy server rewrites the commands on the fly to make it look like the remote server assigned you the same guild card number as you have on newserv, but if the remote server has some external integrations (e.g. forum or Discord bots), they will use the guild card number that the remote server believes it has assigned to you. The number assigned by the remote server is shown to you when you connect to the remote server.
• The proxy server blocks chat commands that look like newserv commands by default, but you can change this with the set-chat-safety off shell command if needed.
• There are shell commands that affect clients on the proxy (run 'help' in the shell to see what they are). All proxy commands in the shell only work when there's exactly one client connected through the proxy, since there isn't (yet) a way to say via the shell which session you want to affect.

Connecting local clients

If you're running PSO on a real GameCube, you can make it connect to newserv by setting its default gateway and DNS server addresses to newserv's address. newserv's DNS server must be running on port 53 and accessible.

If you have PSO Plus or Episode III, it won't want to connect to a server on the same local network as the GameCube itself, as determined by the GameCube's IP address and subnet mask. In the old days, one way to get around this was to create a fake network adapter on the server (or use an existing real one) that has an IP address on a different subnet, tell the GameCube that the server is the default gateway, and have the server reply to the DNS request with its non-local IP address. To do this with newserv, just set LocalAddress in the config file to a different interface. For example, if the GameCube is on the 192.168.0.x network and your other adapter has address 10.0.1.6, set newserv's LocalAddress to 10.0.1.6 and set PSO's DNS server and default gateway addresses to the server's 192.168.0.x address. This may not work on modern systems or on non-Windows machines - I haven't tested it in many years.

If you're emulating PSO using a version of Dolphin with tapserver support (currently only the macOS version), you can make it connect to a newserv instance running on the same machine via the tapserver interface. This works for all PSO versions, including Plus and Episode III, without the trickery described above. To do this:

• Set Dolphin's BBA type to tapserver (Config -> GameCube -> SP1).
• Enable newserv's IP stack simulator according to the comments in config.json, and start newserv. You do not need to install or run tapserver.
• In PSO, you have to configure the network settings manually (DHCP doesn't work), but the actual values don't matter as long as they're valid IP addresses. Example values:
  • IP address: 10.0.1.5
  • Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
  • Default gateway: 10.0.1.1
  • DNS server address 1: 10.0.1.1
  • Leave everything else blank
• Start an online game.

Connecting external clients

If you want to accept connections from outside your local network, you'll need to set ExternalAddress to your public IP address in the configuration file, and you'll likely need to open some ports in your router's NAT configuration - specifically, all the TCP ports listed in PortConfiguration in config.json.

For GC clients, you'll have to use newserv's built-in DNS server or set up your own DNS server as well. If you want external clients to be able to use your DNS server, you'll have to forward UDP port 53 to your newserv instance. Remote players can then connect to your server by entering your DNS server's IP address in their client's network configuration.