Now that the custom LU server community is picking up motion again lately, it might be time to remind the world we're still around.
We're lcdr and humanoid. Three years ago, when no one knew anything at all about how LU's network worked, humanoid managed to decrypt the network traffic captured by pwjones before the game closed and wrote the first server prototype. I then added functionality to load worlds, even though at the time all the server did was send packets from the captured traffics and no dynamic functionality was implemented. In the weeks afterwards, conflict arose between timtech and raffa on hosting and modification rights of this code. Not interested in the drama and knowing that only focused development could eventually lead to a working server, humanoid and I continued our work in private. However we still wanted the knowledge we gained from analysing the client and the packets to be accessible to other projects, so we published documentation from our findings. The timtech/raffa conflict eventually caused the forum to fracture, and most remaining public projects failed to develop any meaningful improvements over the initial version. However we continued our work in private, moving steadily closer to a fully functioning server.
In the last three years, we have spent countless hours analysing the client, the packets and the required network interaction. Moreso, I have implemented our findings in a server which should be the most complete implementation around.
Currently implemented:
Missions
Achievements
Inventory
Quickbuilds
A Scripting system
NPCs
Enemies & Smashables (AI being worked on)
Multiplayer
and many more
As you can see in the video, all the functionality for a fully playable Venture Explorer is there, and other Worlds are almost completely working. Notable exceptions are minigames like Survival and Racing, which I am currently working on.
We are not releasing any public release at this point because we want to deliver a playable server that is able to provide sustained gameplay to players. We've been considering releasing since about a year ago but decided against it because much still needs to be implemented for the game to be fully playable.
Nonetheless, we think that competition and sharing of information is a good thing, and we wish DLU the best of luck with their server project. Perhaps with time more server projects even will appear too.
We hope that other projects also take part in the spirit of shared information and publish their findings or amend our documentation when something new is discovered. The more we know about the network the sooner a fully working server can be realized.
Anyways, I'll be around to answer any questions, and as mentioned in the docs, we're on IRC sometimes too.