About Project Rubi-Ka

Project Rubi-Ka is a server emulator project for the classic science fiction massively multiplayer roleplaying game Anarchy Online, originally developed by Funcom.

The end goal of this project is to produce server software which is fully compatible with the Anarchy Online client to allow for players to experience the game far into the future, even if the original servers shut down, and potentially to play on alternative third-party game servers which uniquely differ from the official live servers hosted by Funcom.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I get involved?

We're always happy to welcome people who are passionate about Anarchy Online and want to help the project move forward.

Right now, the best ways to contribute are to:

  • Play the game
  • Report bugs
  • Participate in discussions with the team and community

We are especially in need of good testers who can identify issues and write clear bug reports. The best place to get involved is the Project Rubi-Ka Discord.

I'm a developer or experienced bug hunter. How can I help?

At the moment, the best way to help is still to play, test, report bugs, and join discussions with the team. If we open up for other forms of contribution later, we'll announce it on Discord.

Will you make money with Project Rubi-Ka? Do you take donations?

No, this project is entirely not-for-profit, and while we appreciate the sentiment, we're not accepting donations at the moment. If we ever need to consider spending more money on our server infrastructure, we might consider opening donations, but we will never profit from Project Rubi-Ka or add any sort of cash shop to the game. If you want to give us feedback, positive or negative, the best place is on the Project Rubi-Ka discord.

Are there any servers I can play on?

Yes, but you should not expect a normal game experience just yet. We still have a number of bugs ranging in severity from game-breaking to very minor, and you should not expect full stability from our servers yet.

We may also wipe the database from time to time, erasing all of your characters and progress, without any warning.

What are the rules I need to follow?

  1. Don't be an asshole
  2. No third-party tools that automate gameplay (AHK, AO#, etc.). See our stance on third-party tools and add-ons.
  3. If you discover an exploit, report it.
Code of Conduct
  • No discussion of contract law, legal matters or copyright law. Please take these discussions elsewhere.
  • No discussion of cheating, hacking, griefing or harassing other players, among other things.
  • Please keep to English in chat whenever possible. We welcome members from anywhere in the world, but to enable effective and clear communication, please keep to predominantly English in public channels.
  • Treat others as you would like to be treated. Be respectful and polite when dealing with the team and the wider community. No begging, flaming, ninjalooting, or generally being a nuisance to other players. Don't be a jerk, in other words.
  • Keep political and religious commentary to a minimum. We get it, you've got opinions on politics and religion, we all do. But whatever they are, they may not always contribute to a cohesive community experience and tend to lead towards... well... "Anarchy", ironically. We're not looking to suppress any specific affiliation, we just don't feel it needs to be discussed here.
  • Keep things reasonably family friendly. Do not share explicit, gratuitously violent, sexual, graphic or offensive content, whether as images, video or text, and please don't engage in sexually suggestive discourse in any of our channels. We're not commenting on the morality or ethics of such things, simply that we don't feel they are acceptable in the Project Rubi-Ka community. If it's not safe for work, it's not for us.
  • Have fun and don't ruin the fun of others. We're here to have fun and enjoy Project Rubi-Ka as developers, players and community members. Making jokes, stupid or otherwise, is encouraged. Try to treat everyone as though they're acting in good faith. If you offend someone, apologise and try not to do it again. If someone offends you, just let them know and move on.
  • Respect and follow the requests of the Project Rubi-Ka developers and admin team. These rules can't cover every possible eventuality, so if a member of staff asks you to address something (or not address something), please respect and follow the request. If you have any concerns with any direction from the staff, message Portaler on Discord.
  • Do not threaten staff. Do not DM staff members (developers and bug hunters) with threats to "doxx" them or claims that you "have their faces". This is not acceptable behaviour. It's unfortunate that such things have to be spelled out.
Our stance on third-party tools and add-ons

Project Rubi-Ka stands by a simple principle: no player should gain a statistical or practical advantage over another just because they're willing to run third-party software. Players who choose not to take on the risk of unvetted tools on their devices should never be at a disadvantage for it.

Here's how that applies in practice:

  • Shader mods are generally acceptable. They change how the game looks, not how it plays, and don't give anyone an edge.
  • Damage meters are generally acceptable. They add measurement to your play, but they don't drastically change how you play or what you can do.
  • Gameplay automation is not accepted. Tools that let one player control other characters remotely, or otherwise automate the play of a given character, give an obvious advantage over anyone playing without them. If spotted, staff will enforce our policy on automated play.
  • Raid tracking systems that require a third-party tool to access content are not something we support. Game content should be available to everyone with nothing but the game itself, and these systems can introduce a risk of exploitation and abuse. Our rule of "no third-party tools that automate gameplay" includes automated speech in public channels.

If you're unsure whether a tool crosses the line, ask staff before using it. When in doubt, we'll judge it by one question: does it give its user an advantage over someone who chooses not to use it?

How do I report bugs?

Use .bug in game to include your character information, or use the reporting form under Known Issues in the player portal.

Please search the known issues before submitting a new report.

How is Project Rubi-Ka made?

Project Rubi-Ka has been developed by carefully inspecting the network traffic between the Anarchy Online client and the official game servers, then writing original code to emulate that behaviour as closely as possible.

We have not seen Funcom's source code, and we have never had access to the official server software. The emulator is the work of volunteer developers who care deeply about Anarchy Online.

We have also benefited from the work of third-party developers in the Anarchy Online community who have shared tools, research, and source code over the years.

What timeline can I expect? Is there a roadmap?

You should not expect a fixed timeline or a public roadmap for feature delivery.

You can, however, expect:

  • Honest communication to the best of our ability
  • Features to be incomplete, broken, or missing
  • Items, nano crystals, weapons, armour, and other mechanics to differ from live
  • Server restarts without warning
  • Performance issues or temporary instability
  • No live support
  • Transparency around known issues
  • A volunteer team working on the project in their spare time

What's the legality of this project?

While none of us are lawyers, to the best of our knowledge, this project does not infringe on any laws - as mentioned above, we haven't ever seen any of Funcom's source code, so the emulator itself is an original work, made to be interoperable with the Anarchy Online client.

We feel it's quite unlikely that Funcom would ever take action against your accounts on the live Anarchy Online servers because of your participation in the Project Rubi-Ka community, but be warned that you do so entirely at your own risk.

Which version of items should I look for?

The current version of PRK is based on patch version 18.4, with some slight modifications.

You can look up item data and stats directly on TinkeringIdiot’s PRK item site.

Supported features
  • Walking, running, jumping and swimming.
  • Zoning - travelling from one area to another.
  • All major transportation systems such as Whompahs, Grid and Fixer Grid.
  • Chat, including support for various channels.
  • Equipping weapons, armour and implants.
  • Concealment/hiding, sneaking and searching.
  • Regular and special attacks, damage, death, and killing monsters.
  • Loot tables, looting monsters, and getting credits from corpses.
  • Gaining experience and levelling up, including title levels.
  • Investing improvement points (IPs) into skills and attributes.
  • Interacting with NPCs for shopping, conversations and quests/missions.
  • Insurance terminals, saving, respawning, XP pool.
  • Vendors, shopping, buying and selling.
  • Crafting/tradeskilling.
  • Gaining and investing perks points and using perk actions.
  • Casting nano programs such as buffs, pet summons, combat spells, etc.
  • Missions, including dynamic mission terminal missions.
  • Alien Invasion.
  • Probably a lot more that we've forgotten!
Not supported features
  • Land Control / Tower Battles
  • Lost Eden
  • Legacy of the Xan
  • Probably a lot more that we've not mentioned!

Here's some of the things we're prioritising working on at the moment:

  • Server and performance improvements
  • Complex NPC quest conversations (e.g. with scripting)
  • Various bug fixes, primarily related to performance (these are regularly showing up!)

What expansion packs, if any, are you intending to support?

Long term, we would like to support most, if not all, of the expansions, as well as potentially creating some content of our own, but we haven't made any firm decisions yet.

At the moment, we have basic support for the core game, some of the Notum Wars content and a good chunk of the Shadowlands content. We are planning to prioritise work on the core game and optimizing performance stability before addressing additional expansions and features.

Can I host my own server?

At the moment, no, the emulator is not available for public release, for a few reasons. Primarily, it would be quite a lot of work for us to support people setting up their own servers as it's quite a complex task at the moment. However, we haven't made a decision about whether we will release the emulator publicly when it's done for people to run their own servers, or just host it ourselves and provide public Project Rubi-Ka game servers - Anarchy Online already is quite a niche game and so it would be a shame to split the community across many servers. This is a decision that we're glad we don't have to make right now to be sure.