A few days ago, we reported on eMule going into beta testing. We went to eMule to discuss things like how the test was going and how this will affect the many mods of eMule.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
There was a lot of excitement in the eMule community with word that a new version of the main eMule client getting an update. So we went over to the eMule forums to get a better picture on what the excitement was all about.
Some Support explained to ZeroPaid that most of what there is to know about this development has already been posted in the Beta forum. He added, “It’s a normal beta phase which we do for before every new release.”
We went to a number of eMule modders to get their responses. Stulle, developer of a number of mods including StulleMule told ZeroPaid, “I think the new version is a great step to improve KAD in matters of security against attacks. Many mods in the past started to [adopt] Netfinitys Safe Kad but it was neither all nor the majority which is using the official client. As such [the whole networks stability will improve].”
Here’s what else he told us:
Another great thing is the Captcha for messages. In the past the modders either had to maintain a list of bad messages like in the Xtreme mod or we had to rely on heuristics. The new captchas will ensure that we do not receive random messages generated by malicious clients. So this is a real improvement.
So, these two are the most obvious changes and as a result will the MorphXT loose all old “Safe KAD” features for the time being and we will see if Netfinity makes an effort to make a new version or maybe he is satisfied. Same applies to my ScarAngel project and Mephisto project, of course.
The StulleMule mod will most likely loose the hard coded list of leecher messages as they become pretty futile. As for Xtreme and subsequent I am uncertain if it will be changed or not. It’s all a little complicated there right now with Xman missing for quite some time. We gotta see if he returns or not. I hope he does although I will not let the Xtreme mod die if he does not.
There is little I can say about the testing. The short pre-beta phase proved to be beneficial and the beta phase proves to be beneficial, again. I think the official eMule team is doing a good job with all the testing and this really helps fixing bugs before they make it into a real release. Having a good base makes it easier for us because we do not have to keep up with official bug- and hotfixes. Although I have not started merging MorphXT or any of my mods, yet, the beta phase is also a great opportunity to merge the code. This in terms helps to release our mods closer to the actual release date, if we dare that is.
Leuk_he, a developer of the MorphXT mod of eMule told ZeroPaid, “For morph we will remove the (netf) safekad implementation because merging it will be hell , and rely on the official improvement in kad.”
When we asked David Xanatos, developer of NeoMule, how he felt the beta testing was going, he responded, “The Beta-testing process of 0.49a is much better than the previous ones, as you may notices from a thread in the development section the new version was available to some Moders long time before the public beta in order to help testing and fix the most important bugs.”
“The more peer review in a development process the better.” He added.
We asked him how this development will affect the mod he develops and maintains and he responded, “Not at all I think, it does not change anything on the need to update the Neo sooner or later, if I had enough free time, I presume the early availability of the beta code would speed up the release of a new Neo version, but momentarily my free time is very limited and so I’ll update to the final when it is final and most likely with some weeks delay.”
zz, developer of the ZZUL mod seems to have been unable to respond to our inquiries.
Overall, it seems that the latest beta test has been, overall, well received. Many users are currently working out the bugs in the system. Of course, it’s a beta version, so there probably is going to be bugs in it. The more users that work on the beta test, the better so as to get a more stable version developed among other things. The near future of eMule development appears to be very promising.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
