0052.lzh (Server Emulator)

0052.lzh
Information
Dates Operating From/To	2003
Current Status	Defunct
Reason for closure	Was a Proof-of-Concept, basis of Athena, Weiss, YARE.
Influenced	Athena, Weiss, YARE
Influenced By	ROServer (0006)
Succeeded by	Athena
Technical Information
Programming language	C
Operating System	UNIX/Linux/Windows

See also: ROServer (Server Emulator)

0052.lzh (Also referred to generally as エミュ鯖 or "Emu Saba"/ "Emu Server") is the predecessor for the server emulators Athena (Server Emulator), Weiss (Server Emulator) and YARE, originally published on 19 January 2003. The name refers to a lzh archive file which was shared on the "EmuServer Of Ragnarok", which is one of the origins of code utilising the Ragnarok Online packets, which in 2003 were unencrypted.

Following a discovery from a staff member at ROPP, an older emulator, named 0006.rar which was retrieved from Archive.org's archive of the EmuServer Of Ragnarok (EOR) uploader, and had its password brute-forced and we were able to uncover the contents of the file which included a readme from the author, named Magical.

Background

On the "EmuServer of Ragnarok" BBS, several authors who were previously players of the Ragnarok Online Beta in 2001, which created a BBS to discuss the emulation of Ragnarok Online and how that would be accomplished at some point in October 2002 . Those who had been able to perform packet sniffing had looked into how the beta from 2001 functioned and had stored the contents of the packets -- this was then then used as the basis of fragments of code to try and reproduce these packets, which were posted by various authors -- one author in particular, Mr 35 (an automatically generated ID for the given BBS) uploaded files with various numbers, 0052 being a fairly well-fleshed-out predecessor known as I-Athena, which is the predecessor to the Athena Emulator.

In February of 2003, a user by the name of "i2" posted his intention to develop Athena:

462 Name: i2 ★ Post date: 2003/03/18 (Tue) 23:31 ID:MBcWy.lI
I discovered the topic of emu mackerel at the end of February, and thought it would be a good learning material for programming, so I decided to develop it with a friend.
We have improved the source of the C language-based "Athena" and will release it as "I-Athena".
I'm a newbie, but I appreciate your continued support.