DarkBlizz

@DKSlayer

You bring up a good point and something I had been thinking about for a while: even if we get the game setup to play against comps, I saw in some of the replays that the comp on very easy is damn retarded. If we can get in there and make it smarter and more fun to play against, well that's icing on the cake.

One thing though... Not sure how easy it's going to be to edit the galaxy files without the SC2 editor. I know you can open them in plain text (and at least they are actual code  ), but you would still need either good luck or serious skill to make meaningful changes to the AI.

One possibility, like you said, is taking the AI from the E3 demo and replacing the "very easy" AI with that one, that way at least the AI does something other than build a single zealot... 

@Microman

Oh, I'm not saying we can't. I just wanted to clear the water and make sure everyone understands we are all really the same team.

Btw, I went to the channel. I really didn't have anything to add anyway, so I didn't start typing. If I make a breakthrough, I will definitely come by and let everyone know.. but don't be looking for that anytime soon   

@ReVoke

Haha, yea I hear ya. Apparently Microman formed a team including me and several people on this forum, which is fine, except that the guys at Rizon thought we were a completely seperate team, which we are not (not really). We are all using the same wiki/forums/IRC/etc.

As far as the crack goes, I think the guys at Rizon are working toward cracking open the single-player UI so that we can play vs AI in single-player mode. (At least that is what I saw usmc say in the IRC text).

Ratchet's explanation is also correct 

Hey guys,

I just got back online and wow... First off, let me say that we aren't seperate dev teams here. We are all working toward the same goal. But because the Rizon channel was locked, and I needed somewhere to start helping with the cracking effort, I posted on this forum. Microman and I started a conversation and it kind of grew from there.

Second: I think Microman miscommunicated when he said we are "close" to a crack. Yes, we have been working offline sort of, but I know at least I am nowhere close to cracking this thing. After all, you don't know what you don't know, and we don't know what "close" is.

Finally: I have seen chatter on the http://00.dy.fi/sc2c.php page and we are not trying to out-do you guys or crack this first. We want to help however we can. Please continue to update the wiki so we can keep updated with any new info that you guys find, and if we find anything important we will do the same.

Yea, I have also browsed thoroughly through the battle.net.MPQ file. That's where I found a lot of .GFX files that I think need a closer look. I also found XML files, though most of it had to do with game strings, no useful info.

Other than that, Andrige is right, it's mostly textures and images for the UI.

But I again I would say, perhaps the .GFX files contain the location it looks at for the map files. However, there are a lot of .GFX files 

@Madcatx

Wow, nice cracking. Seems I was at least partially right though, there is indeed scripting inside of the .gfx files. Although there wasn't any useful code in the ones I saw, that doesn't mean it might not be in other files (MainUI.gfx, etc.) I would think the call to load the maplists wouldn't be in the WindowMapList.gfx file, but rather at some point before that, as the user will need the maps loaded before they actually see the Map List window.

I still haven't really gotten anywhere with cracking battle.net.dll, though the information on the wiki was useful (btw, is the wiki down for everyone else?).

@BeardFist

Cool, let me know if you get one working, and whether there is scripting in them or not.

@Microman

I don't think the debug console will be that flexible. I mean, more power to you if you think you can, and please let me know if you get it working. I just have my doubts about the debug console because, after all, it was designed by blizzard for debugging, not hacking.

@BeardFist

Ahh, you are right. Did you pull that off the wiki cuz I could swear I have seen that before. In any case, I will try that and see if I can at least convert one or two to see if scripting is indeed inside GFX files. I have made absolutely no headway on the dll file... If it was encrypted, how would we get around that? Any ideas?

Yep, I wanna crack battle.net.dll (the one in Starcraft II Beta/Versions/Base13891). I opened it in a disassembler, but all I got was gobledegook, so it's possible it is indeed encrypted. (Of course I could just not know what I'm doing...)

@p-On:E

As far as popular opinion: I'm not sure, I haven't been in the dev channels on IRC so I'm not sure about the conversations going on in there.

I'm also not sure about wireshark (dunno what it is).

@BeardFist

Yea, good idea about uploading as one part. Much less annoying. Might wanna add that link to the wiki so people know about it.

I'm having similar thoughts about the dll. I have tried several programs to little avail. Any ideas about how we can crack this open? I am almost positive what we need is in there.

Well, I can't get it working, but I have never really been that great with things like that. Give me source code

I think there must be more to the dll file than just the very few strings that we found. I mean, it's like 13 meg, there has to be more to it. I have no experience at all in decompiling dll's, so if you or anyone else could help me with that, I would be glad to give it a try.

I got the GFX tool off the wiki under tools:

http://botdev.org/doku.php?id=tools

You will see 4 links under "Scaleform GFX". You have to download it in parts, which sucks.

@Microman:

Yea, I have an MPQ extractor. I see inside the battle.net.mpq there are several types of images:

png - which we all know and love
dds - which seems to be some kind of compiled image
gfx - this one is the one I want to mess with

Unfortunately, the gfx files can't be opened with just windows photo viewer, because they are actual flash files. As I said I downloaded the GFX tool, but I can't seem to open them. I know you can put scripting inside flash files, so that's why I was curious.

The popular opinion seems to be that starcraft 2 is looking at the Bnet servers for the map files. If that is the case, it wouldn't matter where we put our map files, it still wouldn't find it.

We have two options in this case:

One, create a private server and spoof starcraft into redirecting us to that server to look for map files (in which case we would also probably be able to play multiplayer).

Two, find the location in the code where it is defined to look at the blizzard servers and change that to something like 127.0.0.1/etc/etc...

I haven't been able to find this location yet, which is what I'm looking for. I have a suspicion that it is located in the battle.net.dll file. We would need to decompile it, change it, and then recompile it and distribute it. That wouldn't too hard, if you guys had a good decompiler handy  .

By the way: has anyone had any success with using the GFX tool to open the menu files, and seen if there is any scripting on them? I ask because its possible the parameter we need to change is located on the actual button itself, though that's unlikely.

Edit: Microman: what program are you using? Resource Hacker? Where can I find that. I'd like to play with my dll file if I could find a good decompiler.

Edit 2: nevermind I found it. Thanks 

Hey guys,

I have been following this effort to crack the beta for two days now, and I'd like to get involved. Forgive me as I am still new to this, but I hope you guys will catch me up to speed so I can help out.

So far, my opinion is that it would be possible to allow people to play skirmishes if we could just somehow force the maps to show up in the list. I have been searching up and down for just that, but so far have been unable to find it. I am in the process of downloading the GFX tool, and have already been looking through any and all XML/Text files located in any of the MPQ-like files.

so far the only thing I have found in reference to maps is inside the maps themselves, it has this string:

        <Value>bnet:blizzmaps#blizzmaps/Liberty.SC2Mod,file:Mods/Liberty.SC2Mod</Value>        <Value>bnet:blizzmaps#blizzmaps/LibertyMulti.SC2Mod,file:Mods/LibertyMulti.SC2Mod</Value>

My best guess would be that the actual code that specifies where to look for the map files would be in the battle.net.dll. Do you guys have a tool that allows you to crack that one open and look at the source?

Thanks for your help, looking forward to working with you.

Laer