Clank - A high-performance SCE-RT Medius server

This project is an Open Source implementation of the proprietary SCE-RT Medius server stack used in many PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 multiplayer titles. The project was originally intended for Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal for the UYA Online project. However we decided to redesign it to work with many other Medius titles as well.

Our server aims to be feature rich, modular, stable, and fast.

Currently this server supports emulating Medius v1.5 - v1.8, however we plan on adding support for Medius v1.9 and v1.10 (2.10) soon.

Join our R&C Online Discord community for more information.

Features

Server features that are complete will be checked, features that are still in progress or planned are un-checked.

• Modular design.
• Inbound handlers for incoming packets.
• Oubound handlers for outgoing packets.
• Medius packet handling (Medius structs).
• gRPC back-end communication between servers.
• Emulates Medius Authentication Server (MAS).
• Emulates NAT Server (NAT).
• Emulates Medius Lobby Server (MLS).
• Emulates DME Server (DME).
• Emulates Medius Universe Information Server (MUIS).
• SCE-RT encryption/decryption. (Using medius-crypto).
• SCE-RT packet frames.
• Lua sandbox.
• Lua scripting API.
• Database integration (MySQL/MariaDB).
• Simulated database mode.
• Server operator chat commands.
• Support for MEDIUS_MEMORY_POKE and MEDIUS_MEMORY_PEEK.
• Chat.
• Custom Channels and Locations support.
• Configurable player server operators.
• Non-blocking async handling of incoming data.

Game titles tested so far

The table below shows game titles that have been tested with Clank. The focus of the table below is based on a title's ability to get from login to getting in a game world.

• SUCCESS = Able to get past MAS into MLS, create a game world on DME(P2S2P) or MAS(P2P) and be active in the game world.
• PARTIAL = Able to get past MAS into MLS.
• INCOMPLETE = Missing components or planned features to get past MAS.
• UNKNOWN = The title cannot be tested at the moment. See the description column for more info.

Name	Status	Notes
Amplitude NTSC-U (2003)	PARTIAL	Lobby mostly works, MAS is missing P2P.
Jak X: Combat Racing NTSC-U (2005)	INCOMPLETE	Missing native MUIS component.
Jak X: Combat Racing PAL (2005)	INCOMPLETE	Missing native MUIS component.
Killzone NTSC-U (2004)	SUCCESS	Missing native MUIS component.
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal NTSC-U USA (2004)	SUCCESS
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal PAL (2004)	UNKNOWN	medius-crypto not implemented yet.
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal NTSC-K Korean (2004)	SUCCESS
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal NTSC-U Public Beta (2004)	PARTIAL	Malformed payload for CreateGame1.
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal NTSC-U Prototype (2004)	PARTIAL	Malformed payload for JoinGame.
Ratchet: Deadlocked NTSC-U (2005)	INCOMPLETE	Missing native MUIS component.
Ratchet: Deadlocked PAL (2005)	UNKNOWN	medius-crypto not implemented yet.
Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain NTSC-U (2004)	PARTIAL	Lobby mostly works, MAS is missing P2P.

How to build/compile and run Clank

Build Clank Docker image

Clank can be built as a Docker-container micro-service stack, see Docker.md for more info.

Build Clank

To build clank manually you will need to install the JDK 8+ and Maven. You can now run ./build.sh to build Clank on Linux, or build.bat to build Clank if you are on Windows.

Run Clank

In order to run Clank you will need to create a JSON configuration file, there are "example" configuration files located in config/, that can be used as a starting place. For example, make a copy of config/mas.json.example named config/mas.json.

You can then use ./launch.sh config/mas.json to run a Clank MAS server.

1. Copy an example configuration file config/mas.json.example -> config/mas.json.
2. (Linux) Run ./launch.sh config/mas.json.
3. (Windows) Run launch.bat config/mas.json.

If you cloned the repo and are pulling from time-to-time, make note that any changes to the src/main/proto/ files will require the protocol buffers to be recompiled, this can easily be run by running ./compile-protobufs.sh if you are on Linux or compile-protobufs.bat on Windows.

Clank components

This server supports emulating the following components:

• The MUIS (Medius Universe Information Server) is the entrypoint for several games that may have "multiverses", this is generally used before MAS. This server will reply with an ip address to a MAS server. This server is also sometimes used for P2P (peer-to-peer) games.
• The MAS (Medius Authentication Server) is where players initially login using an existing profile and get a session token and ip address that is then used to login to the MLS.
• The MLS (Medius Lobby Server) is where a majority of players reside when they are not in the game world, chatting, looking for a game, managing clans, adding buddies, or looking at stats.
• The NAT Server (Network Address Translation) is a server generally used for P2P games, however it is seen used in P2S2P (client/server) titles to return the client's public IP address to themselves.
• The DME Server (Distributed Memory Engine) is the game server, responsible for hosting P2S2P (client/server) games. This is generally used in the "staging" and "in game" modes in most titles.

You can read more about these components here.

Configuration

You can read more about the JSON configuration files here.

Console commands

Each component of Clank has different built-in commands as they differ per context and implementation, however you can always use the help command to view all commands available in the current component being run. Some commands have [optional] and or <required> parameters.

For all servers:

• exit - Shutdown the server emulator.
• help [command] - Show all commands, or show information about a specific command.
• version - Show the current version of the server emulator.

For MAS, MLS and MUIS servers:

• broadcast <severity> <message> - Broadcast a message to all the players connected.

Lua plugin API

Under construction.

About the SCE-RT / RTIME / Medius Protocol

SCE-RT is the underlying protocol of Medius titles for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. SCE-RT was developed by the acquisition of RTIME Inc. by Sony Computer Entertainment America for their underlying game networking engine for PlayStation 2 games.

RTIME (1997): https://web.archive.org/web/19970720232216/http://www.rtimeinc.com/html/welcome.html

SCE-RT (2001-2006): https://web.archive.org/web/20060619133250/http://www.sce-rt.scea.com/

Read more about reverse-engineering the SCE-RT/Medius protocol here: https://wiki.hashsploit.net/PlayStation_2#Medius

Special thanks

A huge thanks to Game Fuckery Inc. and the following people in the PlayStation 2/PlayStation 3 community that made this project possible.

• hashsploit - reverse engineer, developer, documentation, UYA community.
• FourBolt - developer, UYA community.
• Dnawrkshp - reverse engineer, developer, modder, DL community.
• No23 - medius broker, dnas broker, reverse engineer, developer.
• Darkscorpius - medius broker, reverse engineer, developer.
• Badger41 - reverse engineer, developer, modder, DL community.
• tn1 - reverse engineer, documentation.
• atomic83 - medius broker, developer, documentation.
• 1UP - medius broker, developer, SOCOM community.
• K3rber0s - developer, SOCOM community.
• JoeyWolf - tester, Jak X community.
• Shanzenos - medius broker, documentation.
• Foas - documentation, R&C community.
• TheLastRar - developer, tester, providing patches for CLR_DEV9.
• Thief - developer, documentation.
• Derrik ∞ GHz - medius broker, reverse engineer, developer.
• Megalia1 - medius broker, documentation.
• Cristian - DNAS/DNS host, documentation.
• shad - developer, documentation.