Log in

View Full Version : A hell of a reverse engineering project


disavowed
March 31st, 2005, 01:44
These three guys added multiplayer support to GTA3: http://osdir.com/Article4775.phtml ("http://osdir.com/Article4775.phtml")

bilbo
March 31st, 2005, 05:33
It's amazing! And it's amazing also the fact that Rockstar Games "has a policy of permitting fan-produced projects like it, so long as they are not made for profit"!.

Unfortunately the project is not Open Source as it initially seemed to be, but they will release anyway an SDK for further plugins.

Regards, bilbo

Polaris
March 31st, 2005, 13:34
Quote:
[Originally Posted by bilbo]It's amazing! And it's amazing also the fact that Rockstar Games "has a policy of permitting fan-produced projects like it, so long as they are not made for profit"!.

Unfortunately the project is not Open Source as it initially seemed to be, but they will release anyway an SDK for further plugins.

Regards, bilbo


Well, making the project open source would mean releasing the game's sources... And Rockstar Games would not have permitted that.

However, I really respect those guys, they did a really good job.

lifewire
April 1st, 2005, 03:31
Quote:

Well, making the project open source would mean releasing the game's sources...


Well, i don't really think so. Ofcourse they didn't reverse engineer and restore 100% of the source, they "just" hook and hack new code into the existing binaries, if i read it correctly.

Still an amazing and advanced job though

Polaris
April 1st, 2005, 04:56
Quote:
[Originally Posted by lifewire]Well, i don't really think so. Ofcourse they didn't reverse engineer and restore 100% of the source, they "just" hook and hack new code into the existing binaries, if i read it correctly.

Still an amazing and advanced job though


Their injection seems to be too much well made and designed... I really think that they investigated in depth the internals of the game... And I don't think that any company would like to see their "knowledge" spread around... Otherwise they'll directly given sources along with binary.

But, however, I hope to see many projects like this, and maybe even some well written tutorial about them...

Uradox
April 1st, 2005, 06:28
I attualy used to play this hack a fair bit around this time last year. At that time it was a looot better than it was that same time the year before. They have done some serious alterations to the game to add that support. There is defantly a lot of RE work behind the scenes that the developers/hackers/whateverucallthem have done.
They even had cool stun maps where you try and do synchronized jumping out of a office building with a firetruck, a bike with a bikini girl on - and sometimes someone recording it to a avi for later laffs. It was great fun.
Feel like installing GTA3 and giving it a go again now

bilbo
April 1st, 2005, 07:36
Quote:
[Originally Posted by Polaris]But, however, I hope to see many projects like this, and maybe even some well written tutorial about them...


I like to mention, by the way, www.scummvm.org...
They (34 developers) are very active (last release: 28 march 2005) and are releasing, truly OPEN SOURCE, not just an injection module but the whole interpreter for the SCUMM language. The project started with a complete reverse engineering of 16-bit LucasArt games...

And there are more engine clones (see their Links page).
Best regards, bilbo

disavowed
April 4th, 2005, 22:58
Quote:
[Originally Posted by bilbo]I like to mention, by the way, www.scummvm.org ("http://www.scummvm.org")...
The project started with a complete reverse engineering of 16-bit LucasArt games...

dott 0wn3d

cronos
April 10th, 2005, 11:21
In terms of reversing projects you might want to check out d2jsp which added a full javascript scripting engine to d2lod and enabled people to write bots, etc for d2lod. In fact the javascript engine they use is from mozilla.

bilbo
April 11th, 2005, 08:33
Quote:
[Originally Posted by cronos]In terms of reversing projects you might want to check out d2jsp which added a full javascript scripting engine to d2lod and enabled people to write bots, etc for d2lod. In fact the javascript engine they use is from mozilla.

It looks like they reversed the net protocol, not the game...
Anyway, I find also this project amazing, especially the fact that they can make money from a copyrighted game and an Open Source Engine

Regards, bilbo

cronos
April 11th, 2005, 10:07
Actually they have reversed large parts of the game itself for d2jsp - game structs are available for javascript scripts to read and write. They have spent a lot of time reversing things like the mapping and writing pathing algorithms to traverse maps. Some of the notable hooks are on the networking side and I think a lot of previous d2lod hacks were simply intercepting packets and faking packets but d2jsp has come a long way since then.

Of course it used to be free as well.........