Stand alone 3rd party programs : FFXI General Discussions

i'm sorry for my programming noobness to begin with, but my programming experiance is limited to old dos based GUI C++ programming. Basicly my question is this. How would one learn about programming FF 3rd party programs. Stand alone programs like mr.argus and mr."any name here" that dont nessesarily run on xuleashed. Its confusing for me becuase even if you learn C# or .net or whatever you need to learn, how do you know how to make it interact with the actual game. If anybody could give me some things to learn that would head me in the right dirction that would be great. I'm totally fine with learning on my own, i'm not asking for a "Please tell me how to write bot guide" lol. But i dont want to waste a bunch of time learning something i think i would need to knwo for this, then turns out it has nothign to do with it. So if anybody could give me a list of topics and maybe some links to FF specific tutorials or whatever that would help me laern how to actually interact with the online games that would be great. Also any tips/tricks/pitfalls/ etc etc that you wish you knew when you first started learning would be great also. Thank you so much

http://www.taultunleashed.com/phpbb2/fo ... ashed.html

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I wouldn't suggest using Xunleashed or Exhume if you already know C++. Dont get me wrong, Xunleashed and Exhume work great for some things, but when you know a language that has about 10x the power of visual basic, you would have to be completely insane to not use it.

In a nutshell: read memory address residing within ffximain.dll to find values such as hp, mp, target hp, etc. Next, either hook direct input, send virtual keys, or use windowerhelper.dll (windower creates a direct input hook when it starts, windowerhelper.dll allows access to it). Do X when Y = true. Simple when you think about it.

ty both so far for your repsonses, i apreciate your time . but here are some followup questions (again, sorry for my ignorance, just the whole communicating with the game confuses me).

Ok so, like i said before id rather create a stand alone program and the link you gave me apears to be mostly for creating scripts for Xunleashed or Exhume. I guess i'm ok with just making scripts for xunleashed but it apears that you can do more with stand alone programs. Is this a wrong assumption? Can you basicly do just as much with xunleashed scripts?

Also kourath, my C++ knowledge is pretty basic at this point, although i hope to learn it much better (wich is one of the reasons i want to do this, most the things i would make there are probably bots out there to do it already but id rather make my own..hehe). So when you say things like "open ffximain.dll to find values like hp,mp..." i dont really know what that means. Are there particular sujects matters or books in C++ that pertain to communicating with online information like packets and stff. I hear .net framework used alot when i read boards, is this something i HAVE to learn to be able to do this. Ty again for your time .