Learn about the ways of L2J!

[Trance]

Hello all,

I'm new in this forum. Now to the point, i'm working(^^) with L2J for about ~1 year. I know the basic stuff, how to compile how to apply patches etc. But, i want to learn the core, the structure of L2J. I have read some of your guides in the previous forum. (L2 World structure, l2skill engine explanation). I'm not familiar yet with the code but some parts of it, i can understand them. I want the opinion of you(developers), what you propose me? What can i do, what i have to read so i can get more familiar with the code and with the time i can start coding myself. Someguys told "See the timeline of L2J, and make your own changes" lol, this can't help. If i don't know what each command do, how can i make changes? Also about programming i don't have any experience with java, well from times to times i have started to read some e-books, but after a little time i gave up, nothing else. I only know to programm with php (but very little, very simple things).

So, what do you propose me? How can i start?

Thank you.

[DrHouse]

If you are not familiar to java I recommend to read official java tutorial by Sun. Despite it takes to you 1-2 weeks, following every example and reading carefully everything, in the end you'll save some time (this is investment, not wasting time)

Secondly, try to start reading some easy parts of the core like:

• Handlers (in DP data/scripts/handlers)
• Config (how is parsed net.sf.l2j.Config)
• Effect implementation (net.sf.l2j.gameserver.skills.effects)
• L2Skills (net.sf.l2j.gameserver.skills.l2skills)
• Datatables and parsing data (net.sf.l2j.gameserver.datatables, net.sf.l2j.gameserver.skills.DocumentXXXXX.java)
• Status threads (login/game server telnet service)

After that, maybe can go through the following things:

• L2J modelization (gameserver.model Classes, hierachy and connection to L2)
• Gameserver client and server packets implementation
• Server startup
• Skill/Effects engine
• Network engine
• Login protocol

Usually this is a long path, you'll feel no inmediate progress, specially if you are not familiar to Java.

Good luck.

[Vapulabe]

About Java, there is a nice book (2 volumes) from Campus press called "Core Java 2".