(DIR) warp back
__
(__`__---= SER()ET SERVICE
~~\\\ : spreading`venom
```--= in ur puny miserable
dream world,
we do!
Once upon a time there was MMORPG called TMW ruled by drunk polish
sausage but later occupied by communists. We were 3 core members
with seasonal mercenaries most active in 2012-2014. Hai 2 Phoenix
Council and all PKs. Rest in piss dear all.
Theoretically I could put here game services because game server is
still running but I care not anymore (last time I visited was week
during 2016), so there will be only words with random historical files
put in dedicated folder.
All fun consisted of exploits, info gathering, bots and automations.
With public source code for client, server and even server data
(horribly dumbass) it's no surprise. Besides public online player list
there was also public client versions log/summary table, purpose of
which being public I couldn't get explained by everyone, but it gave
deanonymization results compared to scrambled IPs from game master
access level. At worst I could fall for whisper ping logging of course.
|
| Tools
|
|
Serqet service production included:
(DIR) tmww - monitor/fetch themanaworld online player list
(DIR) shamana - tmwa ghetto bot engine made with POSIX shell
(DIR) mananews - newsbeuter exec plugin for ingame news
Advanced bot ("garcon") with plugin systems, ACLs and all the fancy
features based on supybot is in messed/broken state and won't be
released (if you're aware of OpenKore it was somewhat alike). Simpler
functions including tmww query bindings, chat reroutes, passage guards
and others where delivered on top of shamana in manner of suckless irc
client based on shamana, like this:
#!/bin/sh
while :; do
sleep 0.1
read -r line < piper-pong
[ -z "${line}" ] && continue
echo debug $line
case "${line}" in
*[[]@@http*)
echo debug urltitle
urltitle=$( printf "%s\n" "${line}" | \
sed -r 's,.*[[]@@(http[s]?://[^ |]+).*$,\1,' |
xargs -exec curl -L --retry 0 -s "{}" \; |
sed -n '/<title>/{s/.*<title>//;s|</title>.*||;p;q}'
)
[ -z "${urltitle}" ] && continue
printf "urltitle: %s" "${urltitle}" |
socat - unix-client:piper-ping
;;
*) : ;;
esac
done
Core script was tmww which assumed simultaneous usage by multiple users
and multiple cron jobs on shared server. Script provided excellent zsh
completion and completely covered with man pages.
Most up to date files (honestly I don't remember where do last versions
reside because these smell bad):
(TXT) dbchars.txt
(TXT) dbparty.txt
(TXT) limited dbplayers.jsonl
As you can see, dbchars is list of account numbers with associated
character names and dbplayers json-per-line is list of aliases
combining account numbers and metadata for each player (see tmww
documentation for details).
It started like this:
(IMG) tmww screenshot
Other service provided was shop adverts watchdog.
You may get tmww version reports and some historical online lists here:
(DIR) client version/online list related logs
Official game client never had scripting facilities and there was no
neat solution in the wild (not counting tim, manaplus IPC glues and
such).
|
| Privacy
|
|
As previously mentioned, online list was made public, which met
opposition of notable persons. With versions table updated within delay
of seconds and public online player list it was pointed out as complete
deanonimyzer method multiple times. Instead, raw log of versions was
put online, obviously instantly updated, providing even more accuracy.
(TXT) example investigation
I should obviously point out that until at least 2016 authentication
was unencrypted. Obviously all chat was clear text too (and there
existed OTR client mod from as early as 2010?) but admin's talks about
not storing game chats server side for possible investigation were
funny.
Something made me totally upset in 2015 by wushin, probably was idea
(IIRC not implemented) to publish all unobtainable rares count,
probably more idiotic decisions, I just don't remember.
There were also different small holes, like recreation of purged
character name to grab assigned guild's roster and so on.
Cases for privacy issues included koop's webcam.now.im controvercy,
which streamed screenshots of game central square (now imagine all
those streaming services). Frost decided it was privacy violation. Holy
baboons, that was ridiculous! Sadly noone jumped in with case of
streaming public chat at the time.
(TXT) frost-webcams
|
| Fun stuff
|
|
NPC shop checks. Simplest check is to ensure that no shop sell
item cheaper than buy. Other checks of this kind perform multistep
comparison for all derivatives of items (via e.g. NPC crafting)
available over NPC shops. Game knew load of such errors, git remembers
some:
Adjusted buy price for small mushrooms and amount needed for crafting
iron potion at the alchemist
buy prize changed from 100 to 125
amount changed from 4 back to 2
This prevents exploit but makes using the crafting system as attractive as p
Also updated submodule pointer.
commit edec9c5b9da9c981c1f242e7c3e65919b0056a4f
Jen
Fix an exploit involving buying small mushrooms and selling iron poti
ons.
commit 72bde3af78d170639093e7befd02ead4ffea2ba7 1 parent 5823790
o11c
changing buy price of Cotton Shirt to prevent an exploit some correct
ions regarding whitespaces
commit 85ca9a9a049c003de63faa916b99149a5063e869 1 parent 85c2bab
jtoelke
There surely were more. But they were never enough and it really got me
when it appeared there was yet another with [Short Bow], when you could
do like something this before release:
#!/bin/sh
rgrep -he '^...-.\.gat.*| *shop' ~/tmwAthena/tmwa-server-data/world/map/npc
cut -d '|' -f 4- | cut -d ',' -f 2- | sed 's/:\*/ /g' | tr ',' '\n' |
sort | while read -r item; do
price=$( tmww item -cn show sell by names "${item%% *}" )
printf "%s %s\n" "${item}" "${price:-error}"
done | awk '$2 < ($3 + 0) { print }'
to compare buy/sell fixed prices from NPCs.
One peculiar bug inherent to how tmw server worked was char switch on
same account. You could bring noob character with tank char into high
level map, switch noob char on same account to damage dealer in same
party with tank, did damage with DD, switch char back to noob and do
last blow with tank, This yielded unbelievable leveling rate, rising
noobs for abusing seasonal quests.
Particularly good application was bug in illia sister's quest with
character switch on same account allowing noob to enter without level
restriction. Since there was still requirement for some middle level to
barely survive, it opened doors to most expensive game items grinding.
Saying of illia sisters, another good bug was cumulative time from
doing first quest chapters giving final delay to collect unimportant
but pricey drops in pretty dangerous area, providing order of magniture
higher income than any botting.
Sometimes we were that bored that finished illia sisters with all
ragers:
(IMG) illia with ragers only
and what's incomparably harder - all banshees being only 3 without
cheating.
(IMG) illia with banshee only
But some just didn't share our passion:
(TXT) dyna-takeover-drama
(TXT) hatespeach
|
| Community
|
|
Some words about ruling council of developers and community elected
moderators, which was expected to prevent chaos.
Wushin broke things multiple times a day on production and painted it
as achievement for fixing shit to previous state or using following
release cycle: "we introduce shit", "shit broken", "shit breaks old
shit", "shit removed". There was manipulation about him being queer and
not about his chaotic behaviour because of overdosing speed. At the end
of 2016 year there was no functional test cycle, and day I checked
there was 50 minutes main server downtime, because noone bothered to
try release on test server to see if it boots at all.
Noone could explain how player "previously known as skyggen" got to top
ruling position and why it was approved by TMWC. You shouldn't even
breath on content not being power player. Same goes to gumi, initially
introduced to make cosmetic changes. Guys! Noone give a fuck how you
rub your dicks when you can't clearly answer how you introduce new item
drop rate or sword stat numbers.
(TXT) meko under RAYS OF FUCKING HATRED
You can't get technical decisions done required to be popular and
approved among non-technical community, so I consider this model wrong,
contrary to local dictatorship of Platyna's model.
Now for real world views intervention into project. I'm too suspicious
when someone holding power explains events with god's will. This goes
to wushin and o11c and Frost as person responsible for data migration
from platynium, delegation of privileges and fast disappearance. But
what caught me by surprise was introduction of 3rd gender, with content
dialogs fixed to reflect change. And no, it wasn't because they
introduced some explanative content. That's not how you become claimed
"innovative".
And last word about platinum. There was open source project. There was
hoster. Hoster ran instance and owner player's data. Have courage to
call things their names. I didn't get meaningful explanation of
Platyna's quirks except for impossibly delayed release cycle. Though
behaviour I inspected years after data move - sticking to weird people
Now that these idiots merged TMW with Evol. Shrugs.
I must admit the only thing: now I'm against reintroduction of
unobtainables which I stayed for.
Now blowed steam off on pricks, there were plenty of good peeps,
dropping in occasionally, doing some insane stuff, like Daneel studying
ban frequencies ("bans time had a sinus wave pattern", that's useful
for botting surely but he did observe much more things) or Toby doing
trade analyses. Damn, even fools delivered much fun:
(TXT) cinderweb_vs_o11c
|
| Afterword
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|
I should have pay attention to hercules server community earlier,
marker being vim completion with gnu global wrapper for NPC scripting,
though manaplus being only comfortable open source client AFAIK is not
yet fully compatible.
Resources links:
(DIR) imagebin
(DIR) logs
(DIR) pastebin
(DIR) src
(DIR) tmww
Assembled 2018-02-02