Some how the decal devs figured out how the AC client was talking to the server. I'd like to do something for a similar non-MMRPG game. Could someone point me to resources that would help me get started figuring out how the 2 communicate and then tools to decipher the messages?

Thanks
Lution

Google on "Winsock Shim"

Well, that's assuming the game is using TCP/IP for communications.

You want to watch all TCP/IP traffic between the game client & the server. It really is alot of trial & error and looking for patterns.

eg, repeat the same action over and over in the game, and look for patterns that commonly repeat in the network traffic.

It ain't easy (may be impossible if the packets are encrypted). To this day, some portions of the AC1 protocol haven't been cracked yet.

thanks for the help IPA. Did the decal devs (specifically the ones working on the network interface) use the winpcap libraries, write their own, or use something else?

I've been pretty successful using ethereal to look at the packets to figure out what I'm receiving and sending and about ready to put together my first prototype for catching and displaying them.

-Lution

I'd like to experiment with this idea myself. However, I was wondering if you might break the process down a little and explain in laymans terms whats involved. The game I'm looking at is a text based mud so I'm hoping it might be a little easier than a graphics intensive game.