MacroQuest64

Well, so. I played EQ2 to the point where I've got about 100 levels spread over 3 toons, and now I'm in "the grind." As usual, I find hacking the games more fun than playing them (I guess I'm just weird), so a few days ago I started digging into EQ2 seriously for the first time in months (I looked at it a while back, enough to p.o.c. some Detours code and decode a PDB that SOE leaked... I still have those structures around somewhere... hmm...)

I've found numerous DX tools that just play with DirectX, but one limitation that they all seem to have is a requirement for the app to be in the foreground. After a bit'o'hacking, I figured out how to send keyboard input to EQ2 while it's in the background or even minimized, and wrote a proof of concept detour; it works (of course) -- I had it doing some simple TS'ing while minimized. Saves framerate :) -- but what really interests me is multi-bot groups on one computer. Of course, for this, I need more -- mob info, positional info, health/stats info, etc... I quickly reversed out a static offset for LOC and I think I have one for health. I have access to a tool that does the local spawnlist (damned radiused spawnlists) and since I'm lazy, I may just decompile that to figure out what they did. Seems to work fine.

But now I'm at a loss as to where to go next. Lavish looks very... closed. I doubt that I'd be permitted to contribute much there (despite being a reversing god in my own right) since they look pretty well set up. XUnleashed is a bunch of clueless DirectX hackers with nothing more than some clever send_input crap (okay, that's not entirely fair; they have a nice UI, but UI's are easy...). Forever Hacking is, as usual, full of hot air and no real substance.

I know better than to just put my code up here for free and assume others will help flesh it out; I got burned on that really bad in the early days of MQ when I gave Plazmic and co. tons of code, and they made lots of cash off it and then distributed it to the entire world. As frustrating as it is, I think Amadeus and Lax are right to go closed-source; most of the world is leeches with a few movers and shakers mixed in. There are way more of the former than the latter, and if you tell a secret to one person, you may as well tell the world (or so I've discovered).

So I'm trying to figure out -- go it on my own? That means I need to rewrite my offset finder tools (I can't find a good memsearch tool that I like), my own UI, find all offsets/structs/fns on my own, etc. Basically, a pretty large investment of my time for something that I'm never going to make a dime off of. Or, I can just buy someone else's program and be relegated to never looking at the innards of the game because someone else will do all the thinking for me (heh -- not interested).

Decisions...

The point of Inner Space is that a framework for developing what you want to develop is already there, you dont have to create an entire macroing system, injection, etc. The EQ1 stuff in MQ2 is pretty few and far between in comparison to the amount of work i put into its architecture alone. The MQ2 architecture is pretty useless to have open source -- nobody at all besides me (and possibly one or two developers fixing a bug here and there) has ever submitted a patch. It's the game-specific stuff that people want open, really. And that's the idea behind Inner Space.

It's not really fair to say "Lax and Amadeus", since Amadeus is the one doing the EQ2 stuff, and I'm just creating game independent stuff, and you make it sound like we're collaborating. Not the case, he's on his own and it was his decision to go closed. Likewise, there is a World of Warcraft extension which the developer decided to do open. So it's nothing to do with me, really, it's just what they decide. I'm just giving them the platform so they can worry about the stuff they really want to do -- hack up the game.

Now, I admit I have a biased opinion on this because it's mine, but I really truly believe that there is major benefits to using the Inner Space platform for your development. If you want to go through with it, I do suggest using Inner Space for the platform. It's designed to save you development time on architecture which you dont need to bother with anyway, and makes sure you already have stuff like a beautiful user interface system, scripting and macros (a mq2 macro is a script, an IS macro is keyboard/mouse recording), bindable input, ability to relay commands to other sessions including on other computers, and so on -- and this all works the same in any game so if you were to want to do Vanguard or such later on, exactly the same stuff.

As far as being "allowed" to do something, Inner Space itself is pretty well set as you say, and it's not necessary to submit patches or do reversing to help it. Extensions, however, are up to users to develop and there is nothing wrong with you doing something on your own there or helping someone with theirs. In fact, I hope you do

Ahhh... Well I think I'm gonna go it on my own; I know your work and it's fine code, but I'm sure that as a coder you'll appreciate the desire to get into the guts of things yourself and tinker.

This weekend I reversed pretty much the entire character sheet (HP, power, stats, mitigations, etc.), the buffs, and all the other things I'll need to bot, wrote my memory searcher and offset finder tools, and basically put into place the whole botting infrastructure. Since I don't need any DX overlays, it doesn't make sense for me to go with InnerSpace at the time being. Good luck on our mutual endeavors :)

If you decide you want more features, you can check out

http://www.ismods.com/wiki/index.php/ISXEQ2

..I don't think there's very much now that it doesn't do that any botter would need -- especially with the recent addition of all the UI manipulation stuff.

ISXEQ2 is really pretty awesome. I still don't like the in-game map functionality.. it takes up too much of the screen for my tastes. But as sure as I say that, I pop it open and use it anyway :)

But even that should be fairly easy to manipulate by editing the xml.....

Going closed source is a good idea if you don't want your reversing efforts used for active hacks. I think that was Ama's motivation behind going closed source. It would be cool if some of ISXEQ2s global detours where documented (so that one could detour the detours if needed)


-j

Frankly I would go the IS route if it wasn't an ongoing subscription fee. I know that there's ongoing work required to keep various offsets and structs up-to-date, hence the fee. But I just can't justify another 10/20/40/whatever dollars a month.

Plus, of course, tinkering is fun; I really had a blast writing an all-C# hex viewer this weekend :twisted:

But I just can't justify another 10/20/40/whatever dollars a month.

Not that I'm arguing with you, but its 3 dollars a month. Hell, nobody else would justify $10 a month.

There's reasons for the subscription model.
1) A large number of my customers are HACKERS and knowing this, this model is one of the better ways to lower the number of people who are actually hacking my software.
2) $36 for 1 year is cheap. Consider your average software package. You pay $50 and you own a copy of the software. Then the next year, the publisher puts out a NEW VERSION OF THE SOFTWARE for the same price or higher than the one you got last year. Or even better, you purchase it and then rarely use it. So even with the purchase model, you're still paying yearly if you want updates. And with the subscription model, you only pay for how long you use it.. So if you only want to use it for 3 months, you're only going to pay $10 instead of $36. Where's the loss?

The only way I can see any justification to "hating the subscription model" is people who dont pay for anything and just download the software and a crack or keygen. Fuck if I ever go with the serial number registration model.

Personally, I dont keep any offsets or structs up to date. I dont hack games, I provide a development platform for other people to do that. Amadeus hacks EQ2, and hes not on a subscription model. I do constant development on new features, bug fixes and such. In fact, I do basically nothing besides work. I dont take much time to play.

It's great to tinker and all, and thats what Inner Space is all about -- you tinker with what you want to tinker with, instead of having to create an architecture from the ground up. In fact, I dont honestly believe you read what I said the first time based on "Since I don't need any DX overlays, it doesn't make sense for me to go with InnerSpace at the time being.", or any real info on IS really.

Anyway, dont care, do what you please, you dont have to use it if you dont want to... but your stated reasons other than wanting to tinker dont really make much sense. Actually that doesnt make much sense to me either. Just say you dont want to pay for software, and then it makes perfect sense and you can go on with your life

Dude, I'm totally high, I think I completely misread your prices. Actually 3 bucks a month is reasonable. I'll mull it over.

[Edit] Fine... you convinced me :) At least I can still code a little using the SDK.

I'm in IRC full time to answer any questions you have. Feel free.