Open Source Xbox Live?

i have a few things to say, will post April 2010 or accounts never logged on original Xbox, but it's successors and can't be banned be available, i recommend putting these games on here, X-Men Legends 1 and 2, Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2,Star Wars Republic Commando, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance and one of your posts you said adding backwards compatible games can happen in a matter of days because of the network code is easy to adopt how is it easy exactly, and wouldn't xbox live users be visible to other users on 360 and xbox one, and how will you deliver dlc, and what do you mean it will have a different name, and finally what do you mean by You may also be able to sign into "xbl" while at the dashboard but not in any other title, so are xbl accounts not available in game are they like a permanent placeholders just so people can access the live menus in game or not. can you also give us a estimated release date for the first stage

 

Hi, this looks great, @TheFallen93 ! I have a quick question, though. Is this going to require a monthly subscription like the original Xbox Live, or will it be free?

 

No.

 

what are saying no to specifically a few of those questions can be responded with a no

 

It's a separate network/service with no connection at all to Xbox Live, no accounts that used to exist will exist here. Backwards compatibility on the 360 used an emulator to emulate the old console. It still connected to the original Live service, and will also be able to connect to this.

 

have you have been reading thefallen93's posts

 

About a year ago I made similar progress but only as far as Kerberos authentication that didn't quite work properly. This is nothing to do with Xbox Live as it used to be. It will be a compatible authentication service with title servers written by those who want to keep old games online. Live itself was little more than a user authentication system which granted access to online services provided by the game developers (either hosted by themselves, or Microsoft). It was a very secure one though, even with access to the kernel source code and xonlinelib source code, reverse engineering it is no trivial task. It is radically different to what the Live service is today, which is why support for the old console was terminated. They were running 2 separate networks with no way to migrate the older consoles onto the new technology.

 

It will be free. No money will be made from this in order to try and keep it as legal-issue-free as possible.

 

so sick. I'll have to write a title server for battlefront

 

I'm so down! Battlefront 2 also.

Question: what does writing a title server involve? What languages?

 

I wonder if the same can be done for Battlefield 2: Modern Combat since it used dedicated servers.

 

Everything unless code has been leaked needs to be figured out and rebuild by us the community. Only the authentication login will be covered by thefallen. There will be (just like in the real world) a API your "titleserver" can talk to get all current users who want to play your game online. there are some details that are probably done too but either the games host themselvers and your title server keeps track of stats and matchmaking or You host the levels and games and you need to have reverseengineerd alott more of the per game based protocols (wich is under the xbox one.)
Also a bit more complicated than I describe.. and other words. But it should be posible, the "hardest part" of the live section apears to be dealt with now, now its time for reversengeineering the games on what they expect

It probably doesnt matter in what language you try to write your titleserver, the games expect something and you need to communicate with TheFallen93 API somehow.

 

I'm pretty sure @TheFallen93 said C++ for the title servers but I could be wrong...

 

If I may oversimplify it for a moment...
Load the game up, get past XBL authentication, capture and analyze what requests are sent out from the game, then dig around in the game's files for clues on how the responses should be formed? I'm picturing a lot of guesswork and sifting through hex & a healthy dose of trial and error.

I myself am more of a web developer and C++ isn't something I'm familiar with enough to write. I can read it and understand what it's doing generally speaking, but writing it is a different story. I've written APIs that pull data from databases and then also the apps that use them but this seems like it could be a big learning curve... not that that's a bad thing.

I'd love to help in any way I can though. This seems like it could be a historic feat if it's actually pulled off. You have my axe!

 

@GoTeamScotch, this might be of interest to you:

 

Nice. Going to watch the crap out of that later.

 

Unless the architecture of matchmaking on Live is very simple I would hold my hype. The dreamcast has been able to pump out about one new game online per year for the last 5 years. Don't get me wrong, I am excited, but I am also ready to wait.

 

The source for the xonline libraries was leaked with the kernel as well as the XDK. Reverse engineering the title server protocol isn't that hard when the source code for the client side, and the server side is in a Virtual Machine on my Linux data partition . No reverse engineering really needs to be done beyond any game specific data, the rest appears to be standard.

 

Yes, but the Dreamcast also didn't have any P2P games like the Xbox does, so this doesn't have to be done like it does on DC. First get the infrastructure and backend working, then work on getting Halo 2 back up and go from there. I think after they get the basics done the community can help being other games online.

My friend Kiwidog is helping with the project handling the DNS stuff. He has successfully created a mod tool for Battlefield 3 where dice said mod tools couldn't be done. He has also worked on various Halo stuff over the past few years. So I think we are in great hands and this indeed is very possible. I think with him and TheFallen93 collaborating closely on this project, it will be done. I have already seen some of the behind the scenes stuff and it is pretty promising.

 

*facepalm* So this is why there's been other progress since 2013 if you guys had the source code all along...