The Ashita Project goes live!

[Hyshio]

http://gamerescape.com/wp-content/up...2/12/ffevo.jpg

Today marks a big day in the 3rd party community.

With the full support of BG and Guildwork, I’m here to present to you an alternative way to play FFXI:

Ashita

Made by FFEvo, Ashita is a third-party application (and hook) that allows you to play Final Fantasy XI in a windowed mode seamlessly across multiple instances on the same PC. While that is one of the main features of Ashita, it also brings a rich extension interface to developers to create a robust and highly versatile playing experience by extending what the game can already do.

Ashita is the work of RZN, one of the heads and founders of FFEvo and FFACE. Along with atom0s (lead Dev) we plan to make Ashita one of the programs you come to for a rich gaming experience.

Extensions, commonly known as “plugins”, allow developers to create applications that can extend, better, or automate game play in endless ways. Ashita exposes a feature rich extension interface that has a handful of useful things already done for developers. This helps make the process of getting setup and running a new extension extremely easy and painless.

Extensions have endless limits and possibilities. Developers can reach deep in their creativity and bring out some massive potential to create new, amazing, and helpful tools that create brand new experiences to the game. We are open sourced with our development of extensions. What sets us apart from all others is that we promote creative freedom for all programmers. If you want something created, you have the tools and resources to do such.

We are looking for more developers for extension projects as well as testers for bug fixes and support to enhance Ashita. Show your support today by going to FFEvo.com and using Ashita. We will soon be converting over some of your loved programs from all over to use on Ashita as well.

To get Ashita visit: FFEvo.com Ashita

Any additional info visit:
FFEvo forums
Ashita info wiki

We will add more info by request when it comes.

There are many programs on FFEvo that could be questionable for any players in FFXI. However, we do not believe in hiding the existence of such programs and ask you to express caution when using them as you would with any 3rd party program. All 3rd party programs work with Ashita and we will continue to support that. We are not responsible for the actions you do when using 3rd party programs.

[Cairthenn]

Why would I opt for using this instead of windower? I'm not looking to antagonize, purely seeking information.

[atom0s]

Why would I opt for using this instead of windower? I'm not looking to antagonize, purely seeking information.

It is purely user-choice. We are not here to compete with Windower, but instead bring more options to players whom wish to do things a bit differently.

Ashita has a core development team for only the loader and core hook of the project. The extension interface is fully open source and we do not require any interview or team membership for developers/players to make and release extensions. It is entirely open to allow creative freedom where it has been sought after for so long. One of the drawbacks to Windower was the lack of an interface to give third party developers the ability to interact with the core tool and game directly.

Along with that, Ashita also brings:

• Full support for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8
• Dual boxing support; fixes chat log glitch between characters.
• Fully supported third party applications. (Current Windower apps will work with Ashita.)
• Multilingual support.
• An active development schedule, and a loose release system.

We use an SVN release system which allows us to update any part of Ashita without having to release a full new package. We actively develop additional features, tweaks, fixes, and suggestions into Ashita which can be seen in our changelog and releases over the past weeks.

Ashita comes stock with a lot of commonly known extensions as well as some new never seen before ones such as:

• LuaCast - the ability to interact with the game through Lua.
• Bootstrap - the ability to interact with Ashita fully through C#.

Ultimately the choice is up to the players. We are not here to start drama with other projects, and in fact we are friends with majority of Windowers developer team. Check it out, if you feel the project is no the right choice for you, so be it. But if you do feel there is something you wish to see added, removed, changed, or found a bug, please report it before making your final opinion on the project.

Bugs, Suggestions, etc can be reported here:

http://bugs.ffevo.net/ashita

Enjoy!

Edit: Just a side note, this only really touches the surface of what Ashita does, check out the release notes, change log, forums, etc. for more information. There are a lot of little goodies hidden in Ashita that many users may find useful!

[Yugl]

Luacast = Spellcast with Lua?

[Mojo]

Why would I opt for using this instead of windower? I'm not looking to antagonize, purely seeking information.

Said already, but primarily (for me, at least) because development of extensions is not restricted to a core team of programmers like Windower is. There is even a C# wrapper to more easily facilitate extension development.

[Kohan]

To say that I'm interested in this is an understatement. I can't wait for an opportunity to play around with it. A pity I don't have the day off.

[atom0s]

Luacast = Spellcast with Lua?

It's the start of what will be a SpellCast replacement. It is still in early beta. For now all it has is the full IAshitaCore object exposed to Lua as well as a beta event system that fires a few events. There is no core implementation done to be a spellcast replacement yet but we are hoping to get some interest from a few Lua gurus that wish to contribute to the extension and help us shape and mold it to something the users will be happy and comfortable to use.

You can check out some example stuff that it can already do here:
http://www.ffevo.net/topic/2868-luacast/

But as said, it's still a beta release extension so it will change over time.

Simply put though; the idea of LuaCast is to allow players to do what they can with SpellCast, plus more.

[suji]

Pros: Lua is actually a programming language.
/excitement

[Ksandra]

Question: do you happen to have a site link that gives a breakdown of what lua is all about?

spellcast makes me want to kill many hyshios, so I am intrigued.

[atom0s]

Question: do you happen to have a site link that gives a breakdown of what lua is all about?

spellcast makes me want to kill many hyshios, so I am intrigued.

You can find all the information about Lua itself here:
http://www.lua.org/

For more specific links, here is their reference manual:
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/ (Ashita uses Lua 5.1, not 5.2!)

For a full book covering how to script with Lua, you can find the Programming In Lua book online here:
http://www.lua.org/pil/#online

Lua also has a huge community around their wiki and mailing lists here:
http://lua-users.org/wiki/
http://www.lua.org/lua-l.html

They have a forum and IRC channel as well but both of those are used much less than the rest of their sites.

Aside from that, there are tons of resources online for Lua, it is a proven scripting language used in many successful applications, games, etc.

[Mojo]

If you're one of those people who just gave up after a little bit with Spellcast, Luacast isn't really going to be of much value for you until later on after it's been developed more.

[Ksandra]

You can find all the information about Lua itself here:
http://www.lua.org/

For more specific links, here is their reference manual:
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/ (Ashita uses Lua 5.1, not 5.2!)

For a full book covering how to script with Lua, you can find the Programming In Lua book online here:
http://www.lua.org/pil/#online

Lua also has a huge community around their wiki and mailing lists here:
http://lua-users.org/wiki/
http://www.lua.org/lua-l.html

They have a forum and IRC channel as well but both of those are used much less than the rest of their sites.

Aside from that, there are tons of resources online for Lua, it is a proven scripting language used in many successful applications, games, etc.

thanks! gonna share that info with some peeps

[atom0s]

thanks! gonna share that info with some peeps

As Mojo mentioned, LuaCast is still beta and under-developed. It is not in any shape or form ready to be a replacement yet.
But getting people interested in it early and even tinkering with what it can do so far is great so thanks for sharing the info with others.

[Kohan]

If you would truly like to pursue a beginner's glimpse at Lua (and the concept of programming in general), here's a good page:

http://lua.gts-stolberg.de/en/index.php?uml=1

[Tymon]

I'd love to see some screenshots of this. I'll try it myself but for the lazy people around here some visual support of what it does by comparison would be nice

edit: btw, if you want an extremely simple definition of LUA: WoW addons almost all use it.

[atom0s]

I'd love to see some screenshots of this. I'll try it myself but for the lazy people around here some visual support of what it does by comparison would be nice

edit: btw, if you want an extremely simple definition of LUA: WoW addons almost all use it.

Anything in particular for screenshots? Ashita's base core just runs the game windowed, taking a picture of that is kind of pointless.

[Yugl]

When running Ashita, I noticed the Test Server option appeared. Is Ashita compatible with the test server?

[atom0s]

When running Ashita, I noticed the Test Server option appeared. Is Ashita compatible with the test server?

Yes. It will work with the test server. (You need to be opt. into the test server I believe in order to use it though. Never messed with it personally.)

[Julian]

Tried it out a few weeks ago and was impressed, definitely looking forward to developing some stuff. On the other hand, I don't see myself actually using it until there's a strong spellcast replacement.

[Prothescar]

Being able to use the test server without getting a headache is reason enough for me to give it a go when/if I get back to the game.