Game Hacking with FireScape

It's been awhile since I've done a game hacking post, but I just couldn't pass this one up. After reading Ready Player One (last post), I had an MMORPG fixation that could only be resolved by hosting and hacking on an MMORPG server. This brings us to FireScape, a recreation of the Jagex game, RuneScape Classic. The FireScape server stems from the old rsc recreation, a 200 something revision of the classic server / client. It's important to note that this has all been done to explore what running such a MMORPG server and game client entails, not for any commercial endeavors. Recently I've been hacking on Alex's master branch, which has been refactored multiple times and gone through a few client iterations, all in an effort to make the game easier to modify from a developer perspective. Running our own server gives us the ability to add new items, npcs, quests, skins, and even skills, making the game completely customizable. It's a very eye opening experience and it's fun to see how the game constructs packets and handles various objects. If your into game hacking or game dev, I highly encourage you to pick up an old revision of this game to hack on. It's truly a lesson in reversing a custom protocol scheme, and often involves a tedious amount of Java to add minor features. There are also many blogs and articles extolling the advantages of hacking and running your own private RuneScape server. And there are also some great forums as well, for people to play together, exchange mods, and even hack on new protocol implementations. Overall, it's a blast, and running your own private server gives you tons of insight into how the game operates on a technical level, as well as what is easy or difficult to add to a game like this. Running your own server also gives admin controls in your world, giving one the ability to teleport, change skills, and even summon items or npcs, all of which is a lot of fun: