Help Recommendations for someone just starting out

[sepultribe]

Hello, can you guys recommend any l2off extender sources that would be good for someone that's just starting out in this field? If you can provide links ( topic discussions, files, etc) that would be awesome. Also advice as to what knowledge is good to have would be amazing. Should I dive into the lowest levels of C++? Read a book about x86 assembly first? At the moment I know some 8051 assembly and C++ but nothing too advanced, things you learn in college. Can you share how you started or what you wish you knew before diving into the reverse engineering world?

 

I am hoping to find formulas for skill damage and land rate calculation as I am tired of trying to do it by testing stuff ingame although I had succesfuly found close to 99% accurate formulas for energy/dagger skills and posted them on L2blah in 2009, it was painful.

 

I am also hoping if all goes well to try making an open source extender for older chronicles (C1-C6) in the near future.

 

So please help out if you can by giving some advice, I will not steal your job, not interested in making money from Lineage, just want to learn and satisfy my curiosity.

 

thank you

[tyrkysovej]

Hi, I can recommend this IL L2Off extender share:

 

 

It is I think the latest version of Vangath's sources of his extender. With that and enclosed datapack (on page 3 in that topic) you should have everything you need. You will need to make some changes to the source code to make it running. If you come across any issues, feel free to contact me on my skype: tyrkysovej

[sepultribe]

thnx man

[Nightw0lf]

for starting he should go on frozen or if he want to really learn acis project

he will be lost in l2off

 

[tyrkysovej]

3 hours ago, Nightw0lf said:

for starting he should go on frozen or if he want to really learn acis project

he will be lost in l2off

 

 

I think that if he wants to get to know official skill / etc. formulas, going with L2J is kinda worthless. If he really only wants to get to know how the formulas or skills are handled within the core server, it is just a matter of putting debug logs in the right places.

[sepultribe]

Yes @tyrkysovej I agree. I have already installed aCis and looked at some of its code, but first of all L2J is a huge codebase and secondly its an emulation/guess/workaround of what happens in reality on L2OFF. It will be a waste of time imho. Better go with the real thing as you said even if the difficulty of making small progress is much higher. I have already started googling left and right for reverse engineering introductory stuff. Any advice from the forum's L2OFF devs would be really welcome and appreciated. (Already thankful for your posts @tyrkysovej)

[iPlay.GG - KromBacher]

On ‎09‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 1:39 PM, sepultribe said:

Yes @tyrkysovej I agree. I have already installed aCis and looked at some of its code, but first of all L2J is a huge codebase and secondly its an emulation/guess/workaround of what happens in reality on L2OFF. It will be a waste of time imho. Better go with the real thing as you said even if the difficulty of making small progress is much higher. I have already started googling left and right for reverse engineering introductory stuff. Any advice from the forum's L2OFF devs would be really welcome and appreciated. (Already thankful for your posts @tyrkysovej)

I think you are doing right thing by going OFF directly, I started out similarly and later on found out that J project is very easy. Find your self a 87.3 GF Release EUOFF + MyExt64 by EMCA/MxC  (which is pretty advanced)  or Purchase a Vangath latest GF source (price is somewhere around 150$ - 200 with source code of extender, I have this source, haven't found any issues there, also vangath focused more on customisation, like Auto Potions, Own PrimeStore, Events). Also read depMax64 wiki and roam around Russian forums (scripts etc), prepare your self mentally, you will endup reinstalling OS, reinstalling files, being frustrated, being motivated , but it will be worth, I don't regret anything - Wish you Luck!

Edited January 10, 2018 by iPlay.GG - KromBacher

[sepultribe]

Bumping this topic since I haven't heard anything from the big gurus of the forum. Please share some personal stories of how you started reversing, what knowledge you believe is good as a foundation for newbies, any good books, online courses or whatever you recommend. Anything to give me and anyone else looking for a way to get his feet wet some courage and hope. Or if there is no hope at all for someone who didn't go to Computer Science University, tell me the reasons for that too, I want to hear it.

 

Till now I've been told you either know how to do it or you don't. Or other really vague things that haven't helped me at all to be honest. Advise people, advise, I don't ask you to hold my hand or give me skype 1:1 lessons for free. We need to get this place alive again, like 8-10 years ago, and for this more people need to learn to code in l2off. I am willing to share and document all my steps to help others like me as I go deeper but without anyone's help I don't know how long it's going to take me, or if I even make it to the end without giving up, struggling with depression at the same time. Please consider contributing and thanks for reading this post.

 

 

 

I'll throw some tags here so people get to see this hopefully

@Anarchy@mcbigmac@eressea@Phantasmo@tk422@CriticalError@Sighed

[eressea]

7 hours ago, sepultribe said:

Bumping this topic since I haven't heard anything from the big gurus of the forum. Please share some personal stories of how you started reversing, what knowledge you believe is good as a foundation for newbies, any good books, online courses or whatever you recommend. Anything to give me and anyone else looking for a way to get his feet wet some courage and hope. Or if there is no hope at all for someone who didn't go to Computer Science University, tell me the reasons for that too, I want to hear it.

 

Till now I've been told you either know how to do it or you don't. Or other really vague things that haven't helped me at all to be honest. Advise people, advise, I don't ask you to hold my hand or give me skype 1:1 lessons for free. We need to get this place alive again, like 8-10 years ago, and for this more people need to learn to code in l2off. I am willing to share and document all my steps to help others like me as I go deeper but without anyone's help I don't know how long it's going to take me, or if I even make it to the end without giving up, struggling with depression at the same time. Please consider contributing and thanks for reading this post.

 

 

 

I'll throw some tags here so people get to see this hopefully

@Anarchy@mcbigmac@eressea@Phantasmo@tk422@CriticalError@Sighed

 

Well, my start wasn't so hard because I actually work as C++ developer and I have some experience with few different assemblers (notably x86 asm from MS-DOS era and Intel 8051 asm, both around 18-25 years ago). Around two years ago, I've decided I want to run l2off server but there was only AdvExt stuff (which is great and I wouldn't even care it costs some money, but it would also mean I wouldn't be able to customize it for my needs) so I've started to google for some extender sources and found OSIE project. It's really small extender that aimed to downgrade GF to Interlude and doesn't fix half of bugs present in GF binaries, but it was a good start. So I've installed IDA Pro and started to try to find how all that works. When I was sure I know how everything in OSIE works, I've started to add some new stuff there (offline trade, global shout). When that worked I started to write brand new extender...

Edited June 23, 2018 by eressea

[Anarchy]

20 hours ago, sepultribe said:

Bumping this topic since I haven't heard anything from the big gurus of the forum. Please share some personal stories of how you started reversing, what knowledge you believe is good as a foundation for newbies, any good books, online courses or whatever you recommend. Anything to give me and anyone else looking for a way to get his feet wet some courage and hope. Or if there is no hope at all for someone who didn't go to Computer Science University, tell me the reasons for that too, I want to hear it.

 

Till now I've been told you either know how to do it or you don't. Or other really vague things that haven't helped me at all to be honest. Advise people, advise, I don't ask you to hold my hand or give me skype 1:1 lessons for free. We need to get this place alive again, like 8-10 years ago, and for this more people need to learn to code in l2off. I am willing to share and document all my steps to help others like me as I go deeper but without anyone's help I don't know how long it's going to take me, or if I even make it to the end without giving up, struggling with depression at the same time. Please consider contributing and thanks for reading this post.

 

 

 

I'll throw some tags here so people get to see this hopefully

@Anarchy@mcbigmac@eressea@Phantasmo@tk422@CriticalError@Sighed

well you definitely don't need to go to university for computer science to be able to do it, despite what a few people around the interwebs might say :D i haven't taken a single class or read a single book about programming and i get by pretty well... you just gotta learn assembly is the short answer, i don't really know any good guides or courses for it i just learned by example, looking at code vs compiled and seeing how it works that way is what i did... but once you know assembly it's then just a case of cracking open ida and doing the leg work on researching how all the systems work and integrate with each other, that's the thing which takes significant time, i've been working on l2off exes of various vintages since like 2005 and there's still systems i don't really understand and new things i discover so it's a pretty never ending process but that's the fun part for me or i wouldn't still be doing it :D

[pada]

I would have to agree with Anarchy on the whole not needing to go to school for this. I am a nurse admin by trade, but managed to get myself into L2Off extender development about a year and a half to 2 years ago, the hardest part for me was the asm/IDA understanding, but psudocode helped me tremendously visualize what might be going on somewhere, and has since helped me learn more about asm. After about a year of research and learning, i would say i am now pretty comfortably building my Classic-Antharas/Salvation extender, besides scripts, damn you scripts. In the end it really is just about how much you want to do it, and a matter of finding that one thing that makes you think "I am not stopping until i can manage to figure this out". Once that happened for me, is when my drive towards extender development really took off.

[sepultribe]

Thanks a lot for posting your personal stories, it gave me some hope that people with no "official" background were able to do it. But it may be also that you are really smart and not "average" like me hah. I tend to lose my concentration easily and also get strokes of anxiety when I'm feeling I'm swimming too deep (which is too often) that breaks my resolve.

 

I guess I'll take it slowly from the start, finish reading K&R C book and start both C++ and x86 assembly after it, while searching for windows internals info from a high-level perspective. I'm thinking of documenting any progress here so others interested can follow along, some company would be extremely beneficial in this long struggle ahead.

 

PS: Btw did you guys learn the tools (IDA/OLY/WINDBG) just by practice or read some guide/tut?

[pada]

I have honestly not read 1 single book on ASM/C++, i more then likely should as my coding styles and knowledge more then likely show that with some of the more skilled people i speak to. But all of my C++/asm knowledge is from reading other extenders that have released there source, and some C++ tutorials online, and from messing with writing simple cheats/hacks in other games when bored after learning the basics of Reverse Engineering, Though i will admit that my Reverse Engineering knowledge is REALLY spoiled by the fact that L2 binary's have "Guard" functions that for the most part, properly label what they are and proper parameters :)

[Naelson]

College is depression, here in Brazil. 

Teachers say working at IMB, Intel blah blah blah and do not know what is console application.

They call  console of screen black kkkkkkkk

 

My biggest dream is to learn English and to interact with you, because you have much to teach and I have much to learn.

 

Study alone, best thing!

Website for study http://www.allitebooks.com

Edited June 25, 2018 by Jamba