Overview
Aura is an open-source server software for the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Mabinogi. It emulates official servers, allowing players to create their own servers for the game that they can connect to using the official client. It’s written in C# (core and scripts) and uses MySQL for its database. For cross-platform compatibility it supports Mono.
Development began in 2012, with multiple rewrites in between, and it’s far from being done. Due to the nature of MMORPGs, the way they’re constantly updated, it’s very hard to catch up to a game that’s already a few years old. Additionally me and the rest of the team only work on it in our limited, free time.
The reason I’m working on something like this is that game server emulators can be a great learning experience. You’re not only coding a server, you have scripting, AIs, game-logic, reverse engineering, web development, a community to manage right from the start (fans of the official game), and much more. The only thing that could be as fun is writing your own MMO, but that’s a totally different beast 😉
Unfortunately the project was hit with a DMCA in early 2017, which we haven’t contested yet due to the naturally questionable legal status of server emulators.
Statistics
Development start: mid-2012
Lines of code (core): ~70,000 (January 2017)
Lines of code (scripts): ~58,000
Team size: Fluctuating (1~4)