extracting useful memory locations

[vinsai]

So I haven't played wow in years but I was talking with a friend and we decided that a fun coding project would be to write a wow bot from scratch. However neither of us can make heads or tails of any of the disassembly output from the wow client or any bots we've gotten our hands on. How do we go about finding character health/mana and location (and info on nearby mobs if possible). Also is c# the standard for this? we would prefer to use c/c++, though ive got some java experience and c# looks pretty similar.

[Robske]

http://www.mmowned.com/forums/wow-memory-editing/217837-memory-editing-section-rules.html

Search.

[vinsai]

section 3.3 specifically states that reverse engineering discussions are allowed, and this is wow specific so the general tag isnt needed. I did search and i found some nice tutorials with offsets included but Im sure those are likely to change, i wasnt asking for a handout just a suggestion of a program to use to extract the relevant info.

Anyway, i was using ida to do my reversing but i just found cheat engine and if its what i think it is it will be a lot easier to use. Im gonna play with it later

[Danne206]

section 3.3 specifically states that reverse engineering discussions are allowed, and this is wow specific so the general tag isnt needed. I did search and i found some nice tutorials with offsets included but Im sure those are likely to change, i wasnt asking for a handout just a suggestion of a program to use to extract the relevant info.

Anyway, i was using ida to do my reversing but i just found cheat engine and if its what i think it is it will be a lot easier to use. Im gonna play with it later

IDA works fine.

[Apoc]

I.... don't even know how to respond to this....

[Cypher]

I.... don't even know how to respond to this....

[Ryns]

vinsai,

This section is probably not best-suited for a crash-course in how to get started writing your own bot. While it helps to lurk here and pick up on the efforts of others (offsets, structs, other tips) until you are able to contribute, ideally you should checkout some of the fine tutorials published over in the Programming section.

In particular Apoc has published a series of tutorials,

- [Bot Developers]A simple, but effective FSM for your bots
- [Bot Developers] Object searching, the easy way!
- [Bot Developers] A simple waypoint navigation system. Including loading & saving!

Lastly, Apoc has also recently published the source code for a getting-started project WoWStarter.

When it comes to language, go with whatever you are strongest in, 99% of the problems talked about in these forums are because the person is struggling with the language-of-their-choice, not the complexity of WoW. On MMOwned you will find people coding bots on Windows, Mac and Linux using Java, C, C++, .NET (C#, VB etc.) and believe it or not even pseudo-scripting languages like AutoIT.

Personally, I loath MFC/ATL so when I wanted to make simple a form-dialog UI for my bot it was a no-brainer to choose C# over VC++. However the 'clever stuff'(tm) that interacts with WoW is a C++ DLL I wrote for the job, my C# UI and C++ DLL talk to each other over IPC (named pipe). If you have a Java background you could achieve a similar thing using the Java Native Interface (JNI). If you fancy going entirely in C++, I suggest you read through the excellent source for Orwell84 by PferdOne.

Start simple, try memory-reading some of the addresses in the latest info-dump thread. Get your head around the object-manager and you will be able to build up a 'radar' of nearby objects/units/players. Next step, try sending key-presses into wow and you can start navigating using the arrow keys.

Good luck! and if you get stuck with some of the basics its probably best to try the Programming section first. :wave: