Some advice please (reversing) : LOTROExtreme

Hey guys I signed up for full membership today to set up the lotroextreme package and perhaps contribute towards some nice scripts.

I'm currently learning some more indpeth reverse engineering for fun and I was playing around with Lotro client so I could write a basic little hook application in C++ that showed a list of nearby NPCS as a challenge.

I was wondering what process of elimination you use to obtain the list of nearby NPC's as I would really like to challenge myself to see if I can figure it out mostly on my own. Obviously you do not have to part with your timeous expertise, but I'd be greatful for some helping hints so I can further figure it out on my own.

Currently I find the names/locations/morale/maxpower/power/maxpower/ etc. in OllyDbg.. but for the life of me I can't seem to tie them to an actual organised data structure.

What method do you recommend I try to figure out how to link the data structures together?

I've got as far as figuring out the Target class hierachies which allow me to Target / Show Current Target info..

Thanks anyone that can help me learn, I'd be willing to share what I find with you too since I've been staring at this dissasembly in IDA for days heh I think the script engine in this game and it's properties make it all the more harder to study!

If you can put me in the right direction now and again I'd be more then willing to work alongside figuring out this game on a non profit basis as the learning experience is worth it weight in gold to me atm too including adding what I find to your API framework.

PS. I fully understand assembly aswell and have done some application hooks in the past to read from game memory during my learning curve ...

well if it would help you out, I can extract out all the names/functions for the script system from the archive files

Hey that sounds interesting, what script system are you referring to - lotro API package, if so then thats not really what im looking for...

Regards

yah, I've done some work on the archive format, and I've found some of the files that determine how the client side scripting system works, such as the calls made in each script, and the names of each of the functions for each scripting module

That sounds helpful Sanktanglia, I'd like to see that.

Thanks

Some discussion about it some place else.
I found a static location for full position (same you see in "/loc"):



The heading value appears to be the cosine of your facing angle so
degrees = (acos(fMyHeading) * 57.29577951308232286465f)
should work.

Just above these looks like some of the other values like "instance", etc.

And some text right out of the client that tells you what the "/loc" values are:

I'm also interested in contributing to this project. I think the more people we have working on it, the faster we will find things, and the faster things will be improved to allow for a quality interface into the game. I understand that WyvernX has his IP to protect, but if anyone is willing to share their strategies on finding things or any info they have found on LOTRO specifically that would be great.

So far I'm have a lot of difficutly finding other npc/mob locations... Any suggestions?

Thanks for the info, this has been all I've been able to find in the game using just straight memory searching. However, I haven't really figured out how ox,oy,oz related to lx,ly exactly, or how it is useful.. the facing is useful though. Any more info on the coordinate system?

Is there any light still in this?
If so, I'm certainly interested in helping...