Hello 2004Scape,
As the title reads, tons of people always have tons of questions, and I have tons of answers. I will try to answer all of them when possible. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the game, or want my opinion about any topics surrounding this awesome game!
What can I get for free?
Will we ever start getting phone calls about our cannon’s extended warranty?
I have a couple of extra Steel axes in the bank if you need them.
No!!! I don’t know your phone number!
How will quality of life updates be handled such as fletch x and cook x?
And back when bronze dragons were first released you could use protect from magic to kill them from a distance without a dragonfire shield. A short time after they were updated so tgeir fire breathe hit through the magic protection. So will the metal dragons start already updated?
Kinda same question with the magic short bows special that got nerfed later. Will it be nerfed at its onset? As other weapons like granite maul?
My last question has to do with the crystal bow. At its release it was very expensive. But was later updated so that the more you recharge it the cheaper it got. Will it start with this feature?
Would you consider Lost City your crowning achievement within the RS scene?
Do you foresee any other from-scratch projects of similar caliber ever being created? Or is Lost City the endgame, and everything significant that follows will be based on it in some way?
Beyond Lost City, what project or contribution are you most proud of?
The main priority of this entire effort in general, is to provide authentic recreation of RuneScape servers and player experience from the days of the past.
So with all of the bugs, nerfs, and buffs, that have happened throughout the years, we would essentially follow the exact same path.
There is a Google sheet here which shows all of the RuneScape clients and caches we have access to, which allows us to recreate the server:
Starting from May 2004, we will update the game to every single one of these ones marked green. This is more of the “short-long term goal”. The “long-long term goal” (in the case we are still alive) is to keep going further and further (2007, 2008, 2009, etc etc), I guess until something stops us.
So back to your examples, it depends on the dates of those specific nerfs, buffs, and fixes happened, and then comparing to the Google Sheet if we even have that date. It’s possible a number of versions could be skipped where we just land on after the nerfs and such. If that makes sense?
If this helps, we will not plan to preemptively do fixes and such, like you are describing, only when it becomes authentic for that period of time.
The ONLY caveat to all of this, is if the update introduced something that actually caused a rollback to RuneScape, like the Durial 6/6/6 bug. But, we will document how the bug worked, and maybe even provide a server for that update, but not actually host that update ourselves.
I hope this helps! If not let me know!
Awesome. Cant wait for shades of morytania tbh was always my favorite part of runescape. So will the updates be added as they are ready? Or will you hold some back for specific dates? I understand you guys have other responsibilities and this is a fan project. As one of those who started way back on rsc with sleeping bags i want you guys to know you are appreciated and cant wait to see whats coming in the near future. It would be nice if you guys can keep us uodated on what you are working on and some eta on updates here and there if it is at all possible. Just gives us things to look forwards to.
All I have to say is when its Easter in a few days and especially christmas. PLEASE drop rares
I have been in the RuneScape Private Server scene since 2011 and am very well integrated within their community, and I have never seen a project such as this come together with so many people all to make this thing. That’s not to say people haven’t tried in the past before, I’m not exactly sure what made this project so special, maybe it was because of the year? Maybe it was the timing? Maybe it was the RuneScript implementation? Who knows!
I have always been someone who spoke up about doing open source work, and I have always wanted to have a server exactly like Jagex’s for my own personal use. This is why I have spent so much time trying to understand how RuneScapes client worked, how it should talk to the server, coming up with solutions to do the work, and such… And we just beat Project Zanaris to the punch.
In short, yes I am glad to been part of all this, and I’m glad I yelled at Pazaz to put it online, and yes I am happy about all the success that’s been brought about, and I’m ecstatic that people are enjoying this game. I feel like I’ve played the entirety of this game like 1000 times at this point.
There are some other projects in the works by other people, they are heavily referencing the code we’ve established here for 2004Scape. The way the engine works is extremely complicated to get right, and there’s basically no point in trying to reinvent the wheel anymore.
The only real problem other people have with our code, is that the engine is not written in Java/Kotlin like all of the other servers that came before us. But I can say this…… what we did here has raised the bar so fucking high and we are downright spoiling the players. Seriously, if you spend any amount of time on any other private server, and compare it, the differences become apparent very fast. Hopefully the servers that come after us are better than us but I highly doubt it.
By far the most difficult thing to figure out about the engine, was what we call “interactions”. Things like attacking an npc, how you should path around, firemaking logs, basically what should happen when you click something, there are a lot of different quirks that you never actually see when playing RuneScape, but if you know how to do them, it’s pretty funny to see. The stipulation here is that all pieces of content have to be processed through the same code handled by the engine, so trying to reverse engineer similarities between everything and try to make sense of it.
I still never truly figured it out 100% of the way but it was pretty close overall. Thanks to one of the newer contributors “Bea5” he was able to get it to 100%, he essentially specializes in really niche RuneScape engine details. I can confidently say we are the first RuneScape Private Server to feature every single RuneScape engine feature and mechanic in full operation.
The most enjoyable thing for me to do is to find optimizations and better solutions to existing code, that does the same exact work, but even faster. Every single millisecond out of the 600ms of free time matters here, so I spent a lot of time trying to improve the speed of the most heaviest processes the engine has to work through. I really wanted the server to be fast, and safe, so that it can fully host the 2000 maximum players, as it should. Most servers from the past really struggle just hosting a few hundred at a time. Our server really likes memory and CPU speed.
RuneScript was recreated from their ClientScript and a hell of a lot of questions to Mod Ash on Twitter, and any leaks of the content code we could get our hands on. ClientScript is essentially the same language, the difference being it is exposed to us on the RuneScape client side, RuneScript is only used by the server. So using the information we had about ClientScript, we used that to create the RuneScript compiler, and then slowly chipped away at the RuneScript Runtime as we figured out more stuff about how the game should operate. Many of us are directly responsible for the runtime, but the compiler itself all comes from one man:
As soon as I heard about this, I jumped onboard immediately. And we all became sticklers for recreating the RuneScape server, and mean that basically literally. Even the way the folders are structured in “data/src” are authentic to leaks of the OSRS codebase.
No meme, if you got familiar with how to code on 2004Scape, you could actually become a JMod RuneScape developer without any training involved.
What’s your preference for:
Lets say you’re standing in a bank in Falador on 2004Scape; would it be possible for every above-ground enemy to lock-onto your position and start walking/pathing towards you? Goblins in Lumbridge, Skeletons in Edgeville, Wizards at the Tower; anything that can walk without necessarily opening a gate basically being called to you?
Fantastic. I like many people will always have a special place in our heart for what you guys have done. Many people I know have stated they would love to have an offline single player RuneScape and you guys made that possible. In 30 years I can set up a LAN at an old folks home and play with the boys. That’s just so awesome to know.
Thanks from everyone!
They will come out as they are developed and ready, and it would be all the updates starting From Date → To Date, so if there was only 1 quest added between this version and the next, then it will be super fast. But then if it’s like 10 quests and a whole skill, it will be longer.
I can confirm that Legends Quest will be out soon, and a couple of us are already making moves into June 2004, but many of the developers wanna also be able to play some of 2004Scape as they already spent 2 or 3 years on it 
Someone actually already developed the Slayer skill, ahead of time lol, everyone is definitely foaming at their mouths ready for this bitch to take off, and trust me we all know!
And thank you! More than happy to answer anything else!
I do want rares in the game, because without them, then the “authentic player experience” is technically not met. However, I do not know how they should be introduced into the game, because any solution is technically inauthentic. It truly is as mystery. Maybe slide me a few hundred bucks and I can put in a good word for you.
With 5840 hours, would you ever think to develop your own game using the runescript language?
the whole server is technically inauthentic because in 04 they had rares and we dont. so might as well do it. and few hundred bucks… dm me
Yes just in general, anything in software is basically possible. With current implementation, I think you would have to make some changes to support that, because I am pretty sure I’ve specifically put code in place to not try to path across different levels.
Npcs perform pathfinding in “2 different ways” in RuneScape. And I say 2 kind of lightly, because it’s really only 1 way.
