Will there ever be something like Fiveserver/Sixserver for a modern PES title?

Lon Barron

Lon Barron

Conference
8 May 2018
So, with PES being officially dead and replaced by a F2P GaaS product, it's only a matter of time until Konami shuts down the last remaining PES server.

Everything up to 2019 has already been shut down. The online servers for PES 2020 will be shut down in September. And I suppose a year from now, the last remaining PES online server for 2021 will go offline, too.

Personally, the thought of never being able to play a PES title online again hurts a bit. I have a few friends I love to play with, especially with a fully modded game. However, we're only able to do so for PES 5 and 6, thanks to community geniuses @juce and reddwarf, who were able to reverse engineer server code and create two fantastic solutions in Fiveserver and Sixserver.

For the uninitiated: This lets you set up your own online server (e.g. on an AWS instance) so you can still play PES 5 and 6 online with your friends instead of connecting to Konami's long dead servers.
As far as I am aware of, such a solution does not exist for any PES title after PES 6 (but if someone can correct me on that one, I'd be very happy).

Does anyone know if it's even theoretically possible to reverse engineer the server code of PES 2021 so it can live on online once Konami shuts down the servers? Or do Denuvo, modern server code etc. make it so complicated that I shouldn't ever get my hopes up?
 
It is possible. There are tools for capturing network traffic, and with enough dedication and time, one could reverse-engineer the protocol. Building a server after that is more of a traditional exercise in writing a networking service backed by a database, etc. Nothing too challenging, in other words. But the reversing step is the difficult one - mostly because it's a trial and error route, so you make little by little progress, until you have the protocol figured out. With many false turns and backtracking. It's an art in itself to some extent, really.

Certain knowledge of network programming is required. A bit of experience with packet filtering, also being able to use a debugger (like x64dbg) helps too. But more than anything, somebody must really really want to do it, in order to be successful in this task. ( If you were to ask me, then sadly i have no appetite for this work )
 
There's also an application called parsec which is more for your friends to connect to your PC virtually and play local Co-op with you as if they were with you in the room playing on the same machine.

So obviously it's not an option for match making with strangers but it's an option for some king of multilayer on older games
 
Marlon Anthony said:
There's also an application called parsec which is more for your friends to connect to your PC virtually and play local Co-op with you as if they were with you in the room playing on the same machine.

So obviously it's not an option for match making with strangers but it's an option for some king of multilayer on older games
Click to expand...
Does this work well, no/low lag? As I'd love to do co-op games, co-op World Cup and could even do 1v1, 2v2 tournaments with Evoweb guys.
 
Marlon Anthony said:
There's also an application called parsec which is more for your friends to connect to your PC virtually and play local Co-op with you as if they were with you in the room playing on the same machine.

So obviously it's not an option for match making with strangers but it's an option for some king of multilayer on older games
Click to expand...
These guys already have a big discord fuma community playing with Parsec https://discord.gg/**This Channel is banned. Don't circumvent this filter.**
 
After today's new trailer for eFootball from Coinami, one thread like this was what i was hoping for but then a friend redirected me here and after reading Juce reply... my life is now sad 😢One more year of PES until the servers die and then probably back to sixserver...

However, just imagine how awesome a game like PES21 would be in a custom server where momentum/scripting is completely turned off... 🤤
insert take my money meme here.

Wishful thinking, i guess.
 
johnson7 said:
After today's new trailer for eFootball from Coinami, one thread like this was what i was hoping for but then a friend redirected me here and after reading Juce reply... my life is now sad 😢One more year of PES until the servers die and then probably back to sixserver...

However, just imagine how awesome a game like PES21 would be in a custom server where momentum/scripting is completely turned off... 🤤
insert take my money meme here.

Wishful thinking, i guess.
Click to expand...
Many people will have no option to play a proper PES game online after the PES 2021 servers close. So our only hope is that someone with the expertise would like to immortalise the last ever PES game... :(

We hope...
 
Marlon Anthony said:
There's also an application called parsec which is more for your friends to connect to your PC virtually and play local Co-op with you as if they were with you in the room playing on the same machine.

So obviously it's not an option for match making with strangers but it's an option for some king of multilayer on older games
Click to expand...

I was looking at this the other, do you have any experience with it? Do you know if you are able to add a ping/latency to the server to match that of the client's?
 
just to those who are interest into making reverse engineering and start making the server i leave you a parser and proxy, like a man in the middle for pes6, once you manage to find the ports, address for pes21 then maybe you can create your server

also here's a starting guide for this

i hope it helps
 

Attachments

  • proxy & parser.rar
    1.8 KB · Views: 7
Looks like Konami will terminate PES 2021 soon... they want to push people to eCrap 2022 so ... if anyone wants to save the last PES game ever.. now we must make something...
 
slamsoze said:
The online store dude. The Servers shutdown ANNOUNCMENT will be given in the "near FUTURE".
Click to expand...
Yes i know but again do we need to wait "ANNOUCMENT "looking the Konami situation now ? They are so over the place making bad desertion after bad decision, tomorrow maybe they will think that PES 2021 is reason why nobody play eFak 2022 so … they will terminate it just like that . Again, if somebody want and can make something.. is good time to start now. The server making and reverse engineering you need to capture everything possible, making new accounts maybe is one of that, i don't know just .. we don't have so much time for waste.
 
༺Ƥeຮ༻ said:
Yes i know but again do we need to wait "ANNOUCMENT "looking the Konami situation now ? They are so over the place making bad desertion after bad decision, tomorrow maybe they will think that PES 2021 is reason why nobody play eFak 2022 so … they will terminate it just like that . Again, if somebody want and can make something.. is good time to start now. The server making and reverse engineering you need to capture everything possible, making new accounts maybe is one of that, i don't know just .. we don't have so much time for waste.
Click to expand...
Dude what ? Stop with all the conspiracy, the message is literally same like pes 2019/20, it's nothing new.

https://www.konami.com/wepes/2019/as/en-sg/topic/termination_of_digital_download

https://www.konami.com/wepes/2020/eu/en/pc/topic/game-wepes2020-26236
 
Hayes said:
Dude what ? Stop with all the conspiracy, the message is literally same like pes 2019/20, it's nothing new.

https://www.konami.com/wepes/2019/as/en-sg/topic/termination_of_digital_download

https://www.konami.com/wepes/2020/eu/en/pc/topic/game-wepes2020-26236
Click to expand...
I will not repeat myself, Konami are complete mess now and expect all sorts of nonsense from them, looks like you do not read what i'm saying. OK i will repeat myself, IF somebody can and want to make something about PES 2021 is good to start earlier possible .
 
༺Ƥeຮ༻ said:
I will not repeat myself, Konami are complete mess now and expect all sorts of nonsense from them, looks like you do not read what i'm saying. OK i will repeat myself, IF somebody can and want to make something about PES 2021 is good to start earlier possible .
Click to expand...
🤦‍♂️
 
Pagi84 said:
Does this work well, no/low lag? As I'd love to do co-op games, co-op World Cup and could even do 1v1, 2v2 tournaments with Evoweb guys.
Click to expand...
To be honest, it really does if both you and your friend are close enough. Like in same country.

A ping of 15-40 ms still gives noticeable delay though. But its doable.


I played multiple games with my friends [who are in the same country] using parsec and as long as your internet doesn't go potato on tou or your friend, it will be decent enough. It's like google stadia, but you are the server [or your friend] and the other guy is the client.
 
Has anyone done anything with the info provided and looked any further at it.
maybe we can discuss what we know and see where the gaps and of the job is to much for one person we get the right people looking at the right areas and move forward with it?
 
the easier and better games to do this would be pes 2009, which already has a difficult way to play online

and pes 2013 because of the huge community that still plays
 
server shutdown date announced by konami: 25/08/22

I think it's important to capture and store the communication between clients/server from the moment you press the friendly or team play lobby to the moment you complete a game and you get back to lobby. Generally, all kind of actions should be captured in order to assist the future dev(s).
 
johnson7 said:
server shutdown date announced by konami: 25/08/22

I think it's important to capture and store the communication between clients/server from the moment you press the friendly or team play lobby to the moment you complete a game and you get back to lobby. Generally, all kind of actions should be captured in order to assist the future dev(s).
Click to expand...
Well, its good who know WHAT HE DOING do do it when we still have chance for that. We know that you have some competence in this area, unlike us, 99% of the people in the forum, so .. if you have the time and desire to capture... what you say .. it will be great.
PES 2021 is last PES, It will be a too bad if after 4 months we lose any opportunity to create servers.
 
johnson7 said:
server shutdown date announced by konami: 25/08/22

I think it's important to capture and store the communication between clients/server from the moment you press the friendly or team play lobby to the moment you complete a game and you get back to lobby. Generally, all kind of actions should be captured in order to assist the future dev(s).
Click to expand...

༺Ƥeຮ༻ said:
Well, its good who know WHAT HE DOING do do it when we still have chance for that. We know that you have some competence in this area, unlike us, 99% of the people in the forum, so .. if you have the time and desire to capture... what you say .. it will be great.
PES 2021 is last PES, It will be a too bad if after 4 months we lose any opportunity to create servers.
Click to expand...

if youre interest we can make some matches and try to share here the captures, maybe try to contact someone who want to make the server... i could slowly try to write something, but i cant promise i will deliver a full functional server
 
Guys, just after some weeks, we will lose the coop mode, 11 vs 11 for ever, or in best case for next 2 years... If somebody can do something, we need to start it now, there is no more time for waste.
 
i'm downloading the game once again, just plain as it is, no mods at all, not even sider to make tests and see what i can do about it... im not making promises at all but at least some progress will be done, if someone who understand more about reverse engineering is willing to help, please send me a dm, I know quite a LOT of networking and i know how to write stuff on python (server related and more), but im not a reverse engineer so I can't make progress without that.
 
Marlon Anthony said:
There's also an application called parsec which is more for your friends to connect to your PC virtually and play local Co-op with you as if they were with you in the room playing on the same machine.

So obviously it's not an option for match making with strangers but it's an option for some king of multilayer on older games
Click to expand...
It's not helpful for entry level PCs as the hosting need some requirements which can't be found on some entry level GPUs. It's not viable option either.
 
marqisspes6 said:
i'm downloading the game once again, just plain as it is, no mods at all, not even sider to make tests and see what i can do about it... im not making promises at all but at least some progress will be done, if someone who understand more about reverse engineering is willing to help, please send me a dm, I know quite a LOT of networking and i know how to write stuff on python (server related and more), but im not a reverse engineer so I can't make progress without that.
Click to expand...
hi mate, what are you thinking/trying to do?
and what would i need to learn to help?
 
robozaoGOAT said:
hi mate, what are you thinking/trying to do?
and what would i need to learn to help?
Click to expand...

Hi, i never reply back then, if you take a look at the video i share some time ago here you can see a series of videos of what you should learn... Right now I'm just trying to figure out what ports are use when there's communication between the server and the client
 
The problem with this generation of PES is that, I'm afraid, the server (at least the team-play lobby) has more features and generally seems more complex.
For example, in PES6 you only needed to bring 2 peers to get to know each other (lobby -> room -> go play) and then the game (meaning client's code) would mostly handle itself, exchanging host at half time etc. The same for co-op as well (Except that in co-op the host would not switch in half time).

In the case of team play lobby in PES21, you can see connection bars before joining which implies that your experience will be heavily related to how good your connection to the server is. This ultimately could mean that either the whole game is server side (so the custom server implementation will be much more complex and the hardware requirements for it higher) or at least some kind of server-side syncing mechanism between the clients takes place.
In any case, basic 1v1 lobbies will theoretically be easier to reverse engineer and i think that's where someone should start after he's done with the initial connection to the base server and fetch the welcome messages etc.

In any case we should hope that the servers do not interact a lot with the clients and that the clients do the most work, as this will make custom builds easier to implement. But i'm afraid it's not gonna be as easy it was (relatively speaking) back in PES5 or PES6.

To finish this message in a positive way, if we somehow manage to create a custom PES21 server, we could probably enjoy scriptless matches by using everyone's favorite version of the game. Version 1.0.0 ;)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom