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?
- Don't be an asshole
- No third-party tools that automates gameplay (AHK, AO#, etc.)
- If you discover an exploit, report it.
How do I report bugs?
You can report bugs through our issue tracker.
Please search for existing open 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.
- Probably a lot more that we've forgotent!
Not supported features
- Land Control / Tower Battles
- Alien Invasion
- Lost Eden
- Legacy of the Xan
- Missions
- 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
- Dynamic missions (e.g. mission terminal missions)
- 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.