For OSRS, we've got a mostly complete set of data for just about every revision. The same applies to RS3. However, RS2 is a different story. For a long time, people relied on the game to download the cache, and so the majority of older resources are missing bits and pieces.
Graham's "Cache Aggregator" tool that is bundled with ScapeEmulator helps alleviate most of those issues by cross-referencing nearby revisions for the missing cache data.
The keys used to encrypt map objects ("XTEAs") are also sparse for much of RS2's history. For a long time, most people were simply entirely unaware of their existence. And, outside of bot clients, there was no real effort to distribute the workload of collecting said keys.
For the uninitiated, these keys are different for every region and they are only sent once you've entered the region, which means you have to walk literally the entirety of the map in order to have a complete set. Without these keys, you won't be able to load the maps' objects (read: walls, doors, etc - everything except the landscape itself).
Again, similarly to the cache aggregation tool, we can also often obtain many of these keys by trying keys from similar revisions. However, for the ones that are truly just missing, there's not much that can be done; although a couple of people have claimed to crack some of these keys (i.e. Richard and Lmctruck), no proof was ever actually demonstrated, explanations were demonstrably false, and it'd be ground-breaking cryptography research if they actually found some inherent flaw with the cipher itself.
There are a lot of general purpose cache libraries at this point. For the newer format, I'm partial to Mgi's library, but there's quite a few other tools available. OpenRS and Dragonkk's library are probably the most popular for the 400+ format.
For 317, "Tom's Cache Suite" started it all and was the go-to tool for many, many years. However, there are much better options available nowadays.
Spoiler for Full list:
Map editors:
- RSPSi (317/400+; paid)
- Leanbow's (400+; paid)
- Invision/Peter's (317/400+)
Interface editors:
CS2 Compilers/Decompilers:
Other:
- PoserGL - Animation editor (317/OSRS; paid)
- RSPoser - Animation editor (317)
- RuneScape midi converter and soundbank
- RS3 cache downloader
- OSRS cache downloader
Yes, a lot. Mostly in new engine clients. Earlier revisions are very well refactored and understood.
The overwhelming majority of it.
317 and RS2 beta are almost entirely refactored.
Leanbow has done a lot with his 550 as well, but it's still nowhere close to what we've done on 317.
Method's 578 was useful to me. However, it's also very incomplete in comparison to the level of work put into Major's 317 refactor. There's also some pretty useful RS3 references by Major, mgi, and others.