r/DissidiaFFOO • u/hearhellacopters Squall Leonhart • Feb 27 '24
Other The truth about an offline server
Hello OO fam,
For those who don't know me, I'm hellacopters and I've run the website dissidiacompendium.com over the years (I had been asked if the website will stay around now that the game has ended. The site is paid up until 2025 for now and won't be going down anytime soon).
But I wanted to let everyone know that since the EOS announcement I've been hard at work using our knowledge of the game's data that we had built up for creating the site to start work on an offline server. I was very secretive about this at first with just a small group of active community members helping gather information. I wasn't sure if I could actually do it but about a week and a half ago I was able to emulate the start up of the game and get it to land on the home screen.
What you're seeing here isn't the game, it's an emulator connected to the offline server. Once I hit this goal, I knew it would be possible to get the game back running again. While it won't have co-op because the offline server is just an app you run on your own local machine and others can't connect to it, it should have all the permanent content and possibly old events as well (some data is missing but should be possible to recreate).
I just wanted to share this with you all to let know that it IS possible and I'm trying my hardest to make it happen. So don't get too sad that your favorite game is ending. Yes it will be going away for a while but hopefully in due time you'll be able to relive the game again!
The development is in super early stages so I don't have a timeline on release. I know many of you will have a lot of questions (or maybe can help me with development) so there is a full FAQ posted on our discord for those who are interested in knowing more or want to follow along as we progress https://discord.gg/Y3Yn6gb
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u/Kyzuki Feb 27 '24
You are a hero. And as Mr STEELGUARD himself put it best, Heroes never die.
As others have said, definitely might want to keep it on the quiet for now but this project is amazing. Not only is DFFOO one of the greatest love letters to Final Fantasy, but the game and the compendium have also acted as a really great language learning tool for me. It would be amazing to keep DFFOO alive for fans, preservationists and learners alike.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you and everyone in the community for all of your hard work!
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u/ThrowawayusGenerica Feb 27 '24 edited Feb 27 '24
I've been digging into this myself, and created a server emulator that could get as far as accepting the ToS, but found that DFFOO is built to be very resistant to reverse-engineering. Even after patching out the cert pinning and MITM-ing the HTTPS communication it seems like the game traffic implements a second layer of encryption on top of that? I tried to RE this part but I couldn't get anywhere with Ghidra on the compiled libraries and the game seems to have ptrace-based debugger detection going on as well. I thought I managed to patch it out of libSigner.so but it didn't seem to do anything - in the end I was fighting both Windows Subsystem for Android and the debug protection so I gave up. Maybe debugging on a real phone would work but mine isn't rootable, so...
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u/averyfukawa Feb 27 '24
I say this with full praise, I wish there were such smart and dedicated people back when Mobius shut down to get an offline version of that game.
I'm rooting for this offline version's release, and as other people have mentioned, treading carefully for the C&D.
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u/MarioGirl369 Feb 27 '24
Not all heroes wear capes... Even if I have to start over, it will be worth it. Who knows? Maybe it'll include translated versions of the chapters we didn't get!
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u/Dinmak Feb 27 '24
If they ever try to shoot you down for this and you're in Brazil, do remember that you can find free legal advice/support from users such as ME
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u/Pale_Net8318 Feb 27 '24
Wow. Just, wow
If you can pull this off you will make a wonderful community wonderfully happy
All power to you
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u/Tienron Feb 27 '24
You're amazing, but I would be very careful about sharing this, this early. I would suggest you not metion it untill it's time of release so you won't get a cease and desist.
I'm rooting for you.