Darkan Lobbies

Following the previous article, the cache, client, world server & cache server are all separate with their own code. Back in a previous time of history, the Runescape Private Server space had world server as one unit.

In fact, many servers simply hold one world/lobby on one server with no access to scalability. For Darkan the world server was split into two to allow the ability to have multiple worlds with even the ability to sync players across worlds, or... not sync players at all.

This is the lobby...

Each world is initialized for you clientside when you log into one, lobby being the precursor to worlds 1, 2, 4 & 18. Now, with the world and lobby split in the same way Jagex did it, we have the client, Jagex cache, Darkan world servers, Darkan lobbies and cache server. You can find all the code & game assets on GitHub/GitLab.

Darkan Lobby Is Proprietary

Of all these, the only one not available is the Darkan lobby. This is the case for many reasons, among which is stopping people from spinning off this free resource for developers and gamers alike into some donation service. This way of privatizing the lobby stumps most developers and they are unable to copy Darkan.

Lastly, another reason is security. With access to the lobby, developers would be able to do all kinds of neat and nasty tricks to elevate player status, delete clans and code things to manipulate other worlds. By simply blocking the developer with an API key things are much simpler. For this reason we have Official lobby and Development lobby.

Each Lobby has its own player files

When you create an account through the client, the created account actually is not first created in any of the worlds, like you see above. Instead, both lobbies has its own player files which are instantiated when creating a player account from the client.

Once you login to a world with that player from that lobby then finally the player will be created for that world. Accounts can then be created for 2 worlds but not the others, or just 1 world or none at all, depending if you logged into them.