Curious question - What knowledge would you need to create a bot for a game?

[shinghan]

Hey everyone! I'm no programmer or anything like that but it was just a random thought. What would one need to know in order to write up a bot?

[shinghan]

Hey everyone! I'm no programmer or anything like that but it was just a random thought. What would one need to know in order to write up a bot?

Oops sry for dbl post

[yoyoyo]

That's a very broad question, but first of all you're going to need to know how to play the game obviously.

You're gonna need to know how to write in code. Picking which language to use is completely determined on the game and generally which level of access you are going to need. Do you need to write/modify memory? You can eliminate pretty most scripting languages. Are you writing to a TCP stream? More than likely, you're gonna use C, C#, C++, or Python.

You're gonna need to reverse engineer the game very extensively. What is reverse engineering? It's simply just you figuring out how the game works (programmatically) without having access to the main source code. This is a huge topic and is generally considered "hacking". This can be somebodies full time job to do reverse engineering. Games like WoW have been extensively reverse engineered and sites like this pop up because of that. I'd highly highly highly recommend watching this video of the owner/creator of mmoglider doing a talk at Defcon about reverse engineering. This is a completely covers what you're looking for.

[karnkore]

Don't bother without 4+ years programming experience and after that you have to understand everything about how games work.

[Gentoo]

Don't bother without 4+ years programming experience and after that you have to understand everything about how games work.

That's quite a broad brush you use..

And also, incorrect. One of the best RE guys i've ever known was a HS dropout.

[karnkore]

Eh did I mention anything about HS lol? experience

[Akaike]

Don't bother without 4+ years programming experience and after that you have to understand everything about how games work.

That is total bullshit.

@Threadstarter Just watch the Defcon video.

[AutoScript]

Hey everyone! I'm no programmer or anything like that but it was just a random thought. What would one need to know in order to write up a bot?

Do not let them scare you off.... Try Autoit for starts and make a pixel search bot (just for fun) . You will need to learn a scripting language to access better functions. Try C++ there are many google refrences for it. But like i said do not get scared off.....

This was made with AUTOIT


Have fun with it.
Elzie

[tumms]

That is total bullshit.

@Threadstarter Just watch the Defcon video.

I don't think it's terribly inaccurate. You don't need to be in school for four years, but you probably should have a longstanding interest / working knowledge of programming concepts. Since this is a generic question, you can't assume this user will be able to just pick up where other developers have left off. Trailblazing bot development for a new game would require a ton of intuition and a set of skills that take years to hone.

I could build a house using YouTube tutorials and other info available online, but it would take a long time and I would probably give up way before the more intense work began. I don't think you can argue that someone with years of experience won't build the safer, better, more feature laden house.

So yeah, I'd say you do need a lot of knowledge to build a bot for a game. Programming concepts like advanced data structures, recursion, algorithms for processing data, are what makes a bot efficient and powerful. Reverse Engineering concepts are what allow you to even begin to create something that can interact with a game, and those are often reliant on advanced programming concepts that reach down to the lowest level of processing, not to mention a whole score of other stuff.

Can you make a "bot" that just controls a mouse and clicks stuff? Probably, and it wouldn't take long. But a true bot, that will take considerably more knowledge and time.

[d0wngrade]

I would highly recommend you learning RE with simple applications, rather than jumping into a game right away. That video above is a great resource, but you'll need to know how the software works internally...and not just for the game. You'll need to know how the OS communicates with the game, most likely x86 Assembly experience as well as understanding programming.
I'd start by learning the basics of C++ to begin with. After that download OllyDbg and learn that, the debugger is one of the most important pieces here.
When you're ready, go to Google and find some "CrackMe's". They're just programs made to be cracked intentionally, and most of them come with tutorials.

Good luck!

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