Bored at work?

[Fridlekh]

join #HZHacking on irc.netstable.net and chat with people on Order!

I've finally gotten a working chat proxy running, and so far ... nobody cares! whee!

Maybe I should run it on chaos, or in a different channel... feedback wanted!

Features expandable, and source (as fugly as it is) available, upon request.

-edit: Immediately got nothing but negative over my accomplishment, so moved the bot back to my testing room HZHacking on Order... Now you're more than likely only going to see me there and not get to chat with anyone else. :P I'll keep it there until some sort of consensus can be reached over if this is wanted by anyone at all, and if so, where.

[Steelclaw]

That was an interesting experience. Personally, I think it's a good way for players not logged in (for whatever reason) to keep in touch with their friends who are.

I think the execution is flawed though. Marketplace isn't a good endpoint for that. Yes, it is an active place, but not everyone likes the idea of something scary and unknown invading "their special gathering place". I say that a public, player created channel for the purpose of talking to irc is the place for it.

If you intend this to become a "permanent" service, as opposed to a passing novelty, I suggest that the following issues be addressed as well: (these should be discussed here by all those concerned)

- Who gets to talk across the gateway? Anybody? Registered HZ players only?
- What about a player from another shard?
- Can permitted people be blocked from using the gateway by another person?
(an 'ignore' or 'ban' feature)
- Can a user see who is on the other side?
- What steps are necessary to prevent an IRC user from impersonating someone? Is this even an issue?

Finally, to those on Order, I apologize for intruding upon marketplace. It was still fun talking with you and I wish the outcome was better. Perhaps another time in another channel.

[Fridlekh]

Update:
Moved the bot to #portal
Renamed bot to 'Meduim'
Have switched to using the regualr chat channel rather than a player channel.
Moved myself to the edge of the world, just behind the large door that would have one day lead to the eastern continent.
Made a small attempt at rolepaly of the situation on the Order board :P

I await further opinions on the idea in general, and wonder if there is any interest at all in continuing development of features such as those mentioned above.

[BKBanzai]

Well, it certainly has it's appeal, but I know I would not be able to use something like that at my workplace.

Very nice accomplishment all around. I know people that used to bot into battlenet.

How about an ingame messaging system when you're done with this project? There's a lot of interest in that as well.

Anyway, good to see you Frid, your name actually came up last night on Chaos and high praise for the in game map you developed.

Rawdge dropped by, which is how you got brought into the conversation.

[Fridlekh]

I missed Rawdge? dang! maybe I should hang out on Chaos instead ... I guess I'll give Order another couple days to decide if they want this kind of thing around and if not, I'll be over on Chaos with it.

When you say "Messaging system" what do you mean exactly? My bot could fairly easily be modified (I think) to send tells to people based on input from IRC, but if you're wanting to use some other service to get chat/messages into the game, it would require a bit more effort ... please elaborate on the desired functionality.

[BKBanzai]

Along the lines of an ingame "mailbox", text messages of a limited size. Would be kinda cool if messages could be retrieved out of game, but that's what email is for kinda, although some don't like giving out their email addies. Mostly for leaving messages for in game players.

[Fridlekh]

Well, I've moved things around again. I'm running the bot on irc.strarics.com in #Portal and on the HZ side, I'm on Chaos now in a room called IRC as FridlekhTG (old TG customer support account )

There seems to be enough interest to keep working on it, so here's what I've been doing today:

Implementing a HZMessage class that will aid in the deconstruction of packets for parsing individual messages (HZ sometimes sends multiple small messages per packet)

Implementing a HZMessageList class that will allow the sniffer to go about it's duties sniffing, and not bother with what's in the packets that make it past the filter checks. Currently I have the ability to list.Add(HZMessage), and a simple recursive function that will allow the splitting of multi-message packets into individual messages. look something like:

while(list[list.count-1].header.exbytes !=null) 
{ 
   tmp=new HZMessage(list[list.count-1].pheader, list[list.count-1].exbytes);
   list.Add(tmp) 
}

Conceptualizing the creation of a new message deconstructor class that allows for easier addition of new recognized message types,

Conceptualization of a new message re-construction class to put together multi-paket messages (like the manifest, inventory, sector info, etc)

[Fridlekh]

You might have (but probably haven't) noticed that the chat bot has been down a few days... not sure how many, I have poor perception of the passage of time ... anyway, it was mostly due to implementing the above, which I did, then going back to the problem of the auth server packet and finally realizing that the anser had been staring me in the face for a long time.

The packet is compressed.

That's it.

No fancy digital signatures, or content hashing going on, just a simple compressed packet. Altering the one visible IP:Port in the packet messed up the decompression for the rest and the packet was rejected or being garbage. Once decompressed, altering the server list was trivial, and the client connected just fine through the proxy. This means a few more days of bot down time as I work on re-factoring all the code that related to packet processing, as it was based on the data provided by the packet sniffing library, but now I can just use the payload and not worry about IP headers.

Then maybe a few days uptime, before my PC is shut down in prep for moving... :P Will have the bot running again when I'm set up in my new location with internets.

[Fridlekh]

Like to solve difficult puzzles? Want to help? There's a new entry at http://fridlekh.googlepages.com check it out if you're interested.