FAQs
What are LU Server Projects?
This community of projects aims to provide the capability to play the LEGO® Universe MMO, shuttered in February 2012 after a roughly one year run, through emulating the original servers. This is done thanks to the hard work of many fans in
reverse engineering packet captures and the game client, and also opens up the possibility for further creativity through customization by dedicated fans.
Where can I get in touch with other fans, developers, and community members? Where can I ask questions?
Please see Community/Contact
How did it all start?
Around the time of the games closure, Pwjones was able to capture a significant volume of packets from the live LU servers, which were then able to be decrypted by Humanoid, who also wrote the very first server prototype playing back these
captures. Not soon thereafter, the community began to overhype the little that was available in this implementation, and due to various reasons multiple fractures developed among the community. Multiple groups formed to work on furthering
the understanding and implementation of LU servers, and through the formation, dissolution, and consolidation of these projects, the current major projects have come in to being, as well as paving the way for other experimental utilities
and implementations.
Why can't everyone join forces and work on one project?
There are multiple reasons for this, including:
- Brook's Law, that is, "adding more developers to an already late project won't make it go any faster". It takes time to get people up to speed on a different set of code, a different work environment, and so on. In the end, it's possible
that more resources would be spent consolidating than would be gained by a merger
- The use of different programming languages entirely
- Differing ideologies and specific goals of each project
- Individuals want to try their own hand at building a server themselves for fun or experience
- Sadly, there are still lingering interpersonal issues among some members of the development community as well
However, this is not to say that the projects do not collaborate at all. In fact, this is the complete opposite. There is an immense amount of communication and collaboration among the various teams in understanding the LU systems (for example,
through the public documentation), building utilities, and discussing optimal implementation approaches.
What's taking so long?
Based on a previous comment by LCDR, this is probably best summed up as follows
- At the start, absolutely nothing was known about the client, the networking protocol, or much about LU's systems in general. A significant amount of reverse engineering on the client and captured network packets has been needed to be done,
and even now there's still a lot that we don't know, and we're constantly working to learn more about LU's incredibly complex systems.
- Everything is being built from the ground up. The only things we can use are the RakNet networking library that LU uses, some database libraries, and other extremely generic utilities that are more for ease of programming than anything.
- There's only a few people working on it, and while they have a fair amount of software development experience, many are hobbyists or are still in school. On top of that, no one is working on this full-time, and sadly personal issues and
general lack of available time is common.
How can I play LU right now?
You will need a client (ie, the game itself that you would install from a game disk/with the patcher) and a server emulator (the program responsible for communicating between multiple players, saving and loading user data, etc).
How do I get a game client? Can I use my live client? Can I use the client that comes with the disk?
You'll need a complete download of the final release of the client, version 1.10.64. You can use the
client you played with during live as long as you used the "full download" option and your client was
fully updated. Reinstalling the client from the disk will not work as it does not have all data loaded
(you needed to use the patcher to update it to the latest version, which is no longer online).
While we legally cannot distribute clients or otherwise provide links to client uploads, we are aware
that they exist. To ensure you stay safe from malware and have a complete/valid client, we have compiled
a list of SHA256 checksums we know are valid. We highly recommend doing this verification if you're not
using your own client from live. To verify your client checksum:
- On Windows, open a command prompt and run
certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256, replacing <file> with the path to your client
- On MacOS or Linux, open a terminal and run
shasum -a 256 <file>, replacing <file> with the path to your client
Known good checksums are:
8f6c7e84eca3bab93232132a88c4ae6f8367227d7eafeaa0ef9c40e86c14edf5 (packed client, rar compressed)c1531bf9401426042e8bab2de04ba1b723042dc01d9907c2635033d417de9e05 (packed client, includes extra locales, rar compressed)0d862f71eedcadc4494c4358261669721b40b2131101cbd6ef476c5a6ec6775b (unpacked client, includes extra locales, rar compressed)
How do I get a server emulator?
DLU has released their server emulator which allows you to have a nearly feature-complete experience of LEGO Universe.
For DLU setup questions, the best place to ask is the LU Community Hub.
Until the setup of DLU becomes easier, you may be interested in setting up Uchu:
- Download Uchu Tool and extract the zip file.
- Run Uchu.Tool.exe. Wait for it to download and start Uchu. This tool will also automatically check for and install updates when you run it.
- Download the Network Protocol mod and extract it into your LEGO Universe client folder. Make sure the mods folder is in the same folder as legouniverse.exe.
- Open boot.cfg in the LEGO Universe Client folder and change the line starting with
AUTHSERVERIP to read AUTHSERVERIP=0:localhost, (this may already be the case depending on the client).
- Add a user in the Uchu console (if you're on Windows, the one called Authentication) by typing
/adduser username (replacing "username" with what you want your username to be).
- Optionally, you can give yourself more command permissions using
/gamemaster username level. The highest level available is 9.
- Launch LEGO Universe (legouniverse.exe).
If Uchu can't find the client resources:
- Go to the uchu folder, which is in the same folder as Uchu.Tool.exe.
- Open config.xml using a text editor and locate
<GameResourcesFolder>path to res folder</GameResourcesFolder>
- Add the path to your client's res folder. For example, on Windows this could be:
<GameResourceFolder>C:\Users\Bob\LEGO Universe\res</GameResourceFolder>
For help with Uchu, you can join the Uchu Community Discord server.
What can I do to help?
If you have software development experience, you might want to try your hand at helping out one of the open source servers or development utilities linked below. You'll probably want to start out by taking a quick look over the LU Sytems Documentation
(either via the original
Google Docs or the
Unofficial ReadTheDocs port). Contributions to the documentation of any kind (through additional client or network reverse engineering, systems documentation, typo fixes, or anything else) are also helpful and are always appreciated.
If you become comfortable with how LU servers operate and show competence in your development skills, more established projects may also be willing to take you on at that time (generally by invitation). You can also fork this project on GitHub and submit a pull request if you wish to improve its content or functionality.
Otherwise, your kind words and encouragement do wonders to keep all the developers encouraged to keep working at their hardest to bring back the game as close as possible to the original experience.
