XI Test Client

Archived. Development has shifted to retail-level compatibility work elsewhere; this repository is a frozen snapshot (formerly "MogHouse").

A faithful attempt to port over FFXI game client to work more universally with other operating systems for private server usage. Open source so that if SE ever wants to update their client they can HAVE it..

The client reads the retail install's own DAT files directly - zones, models, skeletons, animations, textures, entity names - and speaks the FFXI protocol to a private server. Nothing here ships game assets.

Which version of the game

This needs a Final Fantasy XI installation updated to the August 2026 patch, and it talks to servers running that same version.

It is not backwards compatible. An older install, or an older server, will not work - and the failure will not necessarily be obvious, because the parts that changed are the ones that go wrong quietly: file ids move, so the wrong model loads, and packet layouts shift, so fields are read from the wrong offsets.

If something is strange in a way nothing here explains, check the version before anything else.

Start to finish

Four screens: find the game, pick a server, pick a character, stand in the world. There is no installer and nothing is written outside the folder.

Find the game

Shown on first run even when the game was found, because a guess is worth seeing before it is relied on. On Windows there is a registry key to read; on macOS and Linux there is not, and the game usually lives inside a Wine or CrossOver prefix - so Choose the folder... is the path that matters there. Pointing at ROM, or at one of the numbered folders inside it, works too.

Pick a server

Any LandSandBoat server, by address. Profiles are remembered beside the executable, so a copied folder carries them with it.

Pick a character

Race, job, last zone, and the face and hair the server has for them.

Stand in the world

Bastok Markets, from the game's own files: zone geometry, building interiors, the character wearing what the server says they are wearing, the server's clock and its weather, a minimap baked from the zone, and the zone's own music.

Building

build-renderer.bat on Windows, build-renderer.sh elsewhere, then dotnet build MogHouse.slnx. See docs for what has been worked out about the file formats so far.

Running

dotnet run --project src/MogHouse.App/MogHouse.App.csproj --no-launch-profile

starts the client: one window, with sign-in, character select and the world all drawn by the renderer. It needs a LandSandBoat server to sign in to.

.\run.ps1 -ZoneId 235 -Look 1,0,0,1,1,1,1

opens a zone with a character standing in it, no server needed. For a scripted login, MogHouse.Console login --help lists what it takes.

Making a build for somebody else

pwsh tools/package-windows.ps1 -Version 0.1.2 -ZoneData path/to/LandSandBoat/data/zones

Produces a zip that unpacks and runs with nothing installed and no environment set. About 60MB, and what a player sees when they open it is:

MogHouse XI.exe
README.txt
data\                       hidden by the client on first run

The client publishes as a single file, so the .NET runtime and every managed assembly are inside the executable; the renderer and the files it reads live in data\. The game's own files are never included - the client finds an existing installation.

-NoWater drops about 50MB of water surfaces, at the cost of every canal and sea being dry. Leaving -ZoneData off drops 34MB, at the cost of zone lines: you then change zones with a command rather than by walking into one.

For macOS, see docs/macos-handoff.md.

Tests

MOGHOUSE_FFXI_RES=/path/to/LandSandBoat/res dotnet test src/MogHouse.Core.Tests

Twelve of them need the retail compression tables, which are not bundled, and skip themselves with an explanation if MOGHOUSE_FFXI_RES is not set. All 143 pass with it.

Controls

The world window takes the keyboard directly. Nothing here is configurable yet.

Where a key exists twice on a keyboard this says which one is meant, because two of them do different things: numpad - swaps walk and run, and the - on the number row turns the music down.

Moving

key	what it does
W A S D	walk and strafe
R	auto-run - keep going forward without holding the key. Press again, or press back, to stop.
Shift	run, or walk if you have swapped the default
numpad -	swap which of walk and run is the default. Shift still inverts whichever it is.
numpad 8 2	forward and back
numpad 4 6	turn
Space	jump. Lying down it waves instead, which is the only thing a corpse can do to be noticed.

Looking

key	what it does
mouse drag	turn the camera
wheel, or numpad 9 3	zoom
Tab	orbit
F	swap between driving the character and flying the camera
M	swap the minimap between turning with you and holding north up

The minimap starts turning with you. MOGHOUSE_RADAR_NORTH starts it the other way. You are the orange dot in the middle, other players are blue, everything else is green.

Sound

key	what it does
- (number row)	music quieter, 5% a press
+ or = (number row)	music louder

The number row, not the numpad - numpad - swaps walk and run. = works as well as + because nobody holds shift to turn the music up.

Music starts at 35%. MOGHOUSE_MUSIC_VOLUME sets that, 0 to 1.

Talking and targeting

key	what it does
Return	open the chat line. Only when there is a server to say it to - offline there is nothing to type into.
/	open the chat line with / already in it, for the client's own commands
!	open the chat line with ! already in it, for the server's GM commands
click	target whatever is under the pointer

A link in the chat log is clickable, and hovering says where it goes. The two chips in the top left corner open the Discord and the issue tracker.

Chat channels

Typed into the chat line. Every one has the short form the real client takes, because nobody types /linkshell twice.

command	short	goes to
/say	/s	everyone nearby
/shout	/sh	the zone
/yell	/y	further than that
/party	/p	your party
/linkshell	/l, /ls	your linkshell
/linkshell2	/l2, /ls2	the second one
/unity	/u	your unity
/emote	/em, /me	an emote
/tell <name> <what>	/t, /w	one person

And the client's own: /logout, /shutdown (/quit), /homepoint (/hp, /return). Anything else beginning with / says so rather than being shouted across the zone, which is what used to happen.

Getting unstuck

Four keys exist because collision can trap you, and each fails differently.

key	what it does
U	back up along the trail you walked in on. If that trail crossed somewhere with no ground under it now, you will hang there - C fixes that.
N	no collision. Walk through everything, including the floor. Press again to put it back.
C	put the character back on the ground
P	print the position to the console

Falling through the floor recovers on its own now, but C is still the quick answer to being somewhere you should not be.

Escape quits.

On the server side

These are LandSandBoat's GM commands, typed into the chat line, not ours.

command	what it does
!pos	print your position, zone and the terrain you are standing on
!pos <x> <y> <z> <zone>	go somewhere. !zone wants an auto-translate name and will not take a plain one; this takes a zone id. Windurst Waters is 238, Walls 239, Port 240, Woods 241.
!wallhack	walk through the server's walls. It is a flag on the character and it persists across logins, so it stays on until you turn it off.
!godmode	stop taking damage
!up / !down	move yourself vertically