More than a year passed since I last popped up here...
In this year I did everything possible to extend my knowledge about Hacking of all sorts, Coding, and so on...

Now I'm at the point where I want to attempt something...

A revival of Fragment pretty much. As the Online Service only offers a Statistic + BBS + Guild + Lobby... and the real gameplay is done via the freely available Area Server.

It shouldn't be too much work to create a Lobby.

The only difficulty lies in Sony's DNAS Service.

So - Now I'm asking... who's still interested?

How would you determine which playable characters get access to the avatars? Or data draining?

Thats not a problem I've to take care of...
In .hack//FRAGMENT every Character can Data Drain...

It's just the nice and flashy Kite-Like Animation thats lacking... the Screen flickers a bit and voila the Monster is Data-Drained.

In Fragment its merely used to knock out Dungeon Bosses and collect rare Items.

Heck yes, the person I've been waiting for to speak up again.
I am definately interested, and I can help too. I'll be in and out of here alot so yeah just lemme know

Well I may be interested in this as well. At the very least I'll try it out and see if it's fun. I hope enough people join to make it fun enough. Too bad there's no Fragment game for G.U. though.

finally some reactions... i thank everyone for showing interest...

well to sum it up again - i am reviving this game bit by bit and hack away at it... the tools i code are freely available to everyone so they can help if they feel like doing so...

till now i coded a data.bin extractor, a cmp splitter and a tex / clt combiner...

so everyone can understand how the game ticks if it comes to graphics i will explain it a bit...

the data.bin contains EVERY graphic, 3d model, map, etc. from the game... many such files are packed together into a .cmp (compiled media package)...
many of those .cmp files then again are packed together into a data.bin... and compressed using gzip...

the data.bin extractor unpacks the data.bin properly using gzip decompression algorithms and a own fishing code i wrote... it results in like... uh... 23.000+ .cmp files...

as im not too good with 3d stuff... im unable to write a 3d splitter... so no 3d editing yet... instead i did what i know i can do... and coded a .cmp splitter that outputs all .tex and .clt files contained in the .cmp files and ignores the other files in them...

a .tex file is a image - ready to get loaded into the framebuffer (directly onto the screen without any need of conversion...) --- they probably did this so they can speed up texture loading in the game...

a .clt file is a colortable that is ment to be applied to a .tex file... a .tex file without a colortable is just trash data pretty much... its useless without this info.

the combine tool can take a .tex and a .clt file and gives u a .bmp file that u are free to edit...
at the moment im also working on a reimporting toolset... so we can get the edited .bmps back into a .cmp and then into a data.bin.

till now only athrun knew about this page... but anyway here it is... i know the bbs aint online yet... im a bit lazy if it comes to website stuff... im more into coding...

http://theworld.serveursprives.fr/

for all people interested in this project... i hope to see you there... also direct contact to me via msn might not be a bad idea... especially if u think u can help somehow...

msn: coldbird123@hotmail.com
icq: 419134465

the plan for this project is easy to list up...
1. do ex- and importers for all files on the disc... so we can localize the game with english contents... and maybe a few graphical improvements by texture editing...
2. do proper dnas hacking... if we dont do this... the only consoles who wlll be able to go online are "japanese region" ps2s... or ps2s up to V7... cause those are capable of changing their regionmode using several homebrew tools...
3. once connectivity problems with dnas are solved... we have to relink the game to our own server... do a universal "dnas success" response... and then start work on the real server.

useful tools for this work definently will be emulators like pcsx2... now that they support ethernet and dnas - im pretty positive this will save us a lot of dvd media and help us doing dnas hacks...

EDIT: oh btw... before someone complains... I know the page is broken on Internet Explorer... and NO - I WONT FIX IT -- Go die you stupid IE Users - heard me? DIEEEEE xD
Get something proper like Firefox or something...

EDIT2: im in fact quite happy to see that this topic aint locked - deleted or similiar. afterall the stickied topic is strictly against talking about .hack MMOs xD
nomnomnom~

Well, this all sounds rather complex.

well... yeah ^^
but exactly thats the reason why i want to have some people who really care for a .hack mmo...
cause if not it wont be worth the trouble... analysing the files was the smallest thing... i now finished prg analysis... those files hold parts of the games' dialog data... like menus and similiar...

the real hard stuff is still ahead of me... i just hope that in the end i wont be facing this horrible work all on my own.

so... im waiting... for more people.

Haha, fair enough. I'd be interested in playing it if it was an option, but I unfortunately can't help with all that script and bin stuff XD

I really wished this wasnt my first PS2 Project... the lack of knowledge about the PS2 really gets to me...

I would be interested if you can get it up and runnin. But is it going to be on the computer or a game system? If it is going to be on the puter I will definately play. Is it going to have like in G.U. where you can be something like a rouge and be able to have three different weapon types or is it stricktly a one person gets one class or what? I am a diehard dot.hack player so can I get these questions answered ASAP?

They can...

Its pretty much a real "The World" --- but R1... so everything that applies to R1 applies here.

If you're a die-hard-fan you know this means... 1 Job per Player.

It's for PS2... people are capable of playing offline to level up... or online together with friends... its also possible to invite friends into a "own" area... which you can design on your PC...

I can assist in hosting a server with the cash I got at the moment.

im definetly interested ...i didnt find out about fragment until it was no longer available

Well - The Problem for fragment work right now aint the lack of a server but far more the lack of proper debugging...
My PS2 is a oldie - its still chipped with a Ripper 2 Modchip... which aint stealth and also ain't capable of booting .hack//FRAGMENT from HDD...

Which leaves me with burning a DVD every time I do a edit to the game... not minding how little this edit is... just to test if it works fine...

So I got two options... get me a new PS2 with a DMS Pro Evo Modchip or a whole lot of DVD Blanks (1000+)...
I think a new PS2 would be the better option... but as I got no cash at the moment I'm more or less halting work on Fragment till I've got enough cash to get me a PS2 + Evo + HDD Kit...

As those old PS2 like mine are rare though... and those being the only HDD capable... I guess it will be hard to grab one thats capable of doing what we need for this project.

Also I'm forced into investing money into one of my other Projects which is finally ready for a Beta... So this project more or less is now depending on Donations - or a extremely long waiting time till Im in a financial situation where I can allow myself investing money into a hobby.

News - I'm now trying to get this done with another approach... instead of doing all by myself - I want people to test out stuff for me in my stead...

Whoever wishes to help with this, please contact me - so I can get a beta-testing team together...

Testing out stuff for you.. do you mean playing?

Anyhow, I'm quite interested in this project!

Yes... its what I mean.
As the translations, etc. are done by normal people and not bandai... even people who never played .hack before... it might give problems understanding the translated contents ingame... as they aren't what you expect them to be from other .hack games...

We sorta need people to "bugtest" the translation and provide feedback with more fitting replacements, etc...

Once enough people donate to get me a slim ps2.... I can start working on Networking... meaning the actual server and #####...

A BBS also is online now... I even released the sourcecode of the tools I'm using to create patches, extract images, etc...

To sum it up... We need every help we can get... especially translators right now and donators.

Dang, that does sound interesting. I'd like to help out, but sadily the only other language I am fluent in is spanish and I don't have the dough to donate... but is there anything else I could possibly help out with???

Sadly my knowledge in japanese is next to nothing but I would like to help to. Can't donate either, I have no income at the moment.

You could cheer on me on the "The World" BBS or something... pushing my moral at this point wouldn't be bad. ^^'
http://theworld.serveursprives.fr

Also - To keep the Game "Authentic" - I started reimporting Item, Skills and Monster-Tables from .hack//QUARANTINE (EU Version - SLES52468) to Fragment...

The thing works fine till now... And all Defensive Items & Monsters are already translated... fully identical to their naming in .hack//QUARANTINE

About Weapons - Twin Blade and Blademaster are already done... Identical naming to Quarantine here aswell... I'll probably do Heavy Blade sometime tonight... got no nerves to do much more work at the moment...

The next Patch I'll release will include fully translated Skills, Items and Monsters... and of course the translated Menu I've presented in the last Patch I released...

I really hope people will donate a bit at some point - cause I really can't afford buying a ps2-slim right now...

Oh and... sorry to say - No Digicam-Material for the next patch... in it's stead I'll record a video using my TV-Capture Card.
I finally got the old baby working again... it won't be the best quality but still a lot better than the digicam shots... xD

Heck yes. i am IN

unfortenitly i cant help any

if u cant what u mean with "im in" ^^''
not many people manage to confuse me - you did - congratulations. then again its a late hour... hahaha.

http://theworld.serveursprives.fr/?p=38

Revision 2 Patch is out... A lot of content has been translated... Check the Blog Post for a Youtube Video.

Greetings Everyone,

For those of you who already know, The Morpg "Fragment" revival project is still going on at the new site Coldbird.celes-network.de/bbs

This is a revival Project at That plans to revive fragment and its Online Glory.

We are making huge progress, and i invite you to join our community and help support this great Project.

We are Currently in the Translation Process and are in need of very skilled Japanese Translators to help Translate the game into English.

There are just few things left until the game is translated, but we cannot progress until we have a couple skilled translators to help with what is left.

So if you are a Fan of the .hack Series come and join us.

One day we can all play in "The World" Together.

-Barumunku

i wouldnt mind seeing fragement here in the US. i was always wondering what it would be like to have a .hack character of my own. then again...just like any other mmo's there's always not enough character selection so people just make copies of themseves. if they made like unique customizing system that allowed everyone to have a unique character it would be the game i would be playing a bunch! lol plus .hack is just awesome. but they should make it like the new .hack. .hack GU with the rengeki and stuff like that.

I sorta like the old system a tad more. But the new one would be nice I guess. But I bet it would take longer to do.