Re: Game bots in java?
On May 2, 2:53 pm, "Arved Sandstrom" <asandst...@accesswave.ca> wrote:
<no_s...@arcor.de> wrote in message
news:67af5ed3-5624-42fb-b787-2fd8dce5884e@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...>=
Hi everyone,
I was wondering if it is possible to write bots for computer games in
Java. I know there are planty of them online, but it would be nice to
develope one just for fun. At the moment I am planning to write one
for World of Warcraft. I know it is against the rules but I do not
care and I am only interested in the technology and do not want to
make profit of my application.
[ SNIP ]
Just out of curiosity I took a look at the WoW EULA. That's a hell of a
document. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would agree to it.
The EULA, like many, is essentially unenforcable beyond the provisions
of copyright law in your country. If you happen to be in the U.S.,
well, lobby for saner software copyrights and customer rights.
The Terms of Use (TOU/TOS) is the document that matters: it dictates
the terms under which you are permitted to play on Blizzard's servers,
and it includes some fairly hilarious items of its own (such as: they
can terminate your service if you play on unsanctioned servers, or if
you are reverse-engineering the protocol, or if you automate gameplay,
or if it happens to be the third Tuesday of the month and you're not
wearing blue). The OP's project is a violation of specific terms in
the TOU, and will therefore not be permitted for very long against
Blizzard's servers. See, eg., WoWGlider for an example of how quickly
Blizzard acts to shut down attempts to automate gameplay.
To the OP: of course, Java can in theory automate gameplay in any
network game, by emitting network traffic indistinguishable from the
traffic emitted by a real client. However, you would have to reverse-
engineer the network protocols involved, since Blizzard does not
publish a specification. This is not a trivial task.
Reaching in to manipulate and monitor an existing client, instead, is
somewhat complicated because the only interface most game clients
(including WoW's) expose is the client/server network protocol. As
others have suggested, for any given platform you may be able to write
some native glue to reach into the client's address space and monitor
or modify data there directly, but at that point you might be better
off writing your bot in a language with a less-onerous native
interface.
-o