CheatEngine Potential? Locally Play Your Character as a Dev?

[Annihilius]

OK - I am far from educated in this field, but something dawned upon me recently that I was wondering if would be at all possible.

I understand most of the stuff going on in the game was considered server-side, npcs, world effects and events, etc. But, is it true that we do have enough local files to at the very least get into a zone?

I was wondering if it would be at all possible to use CheatEngine much like was done to enter the costume editor - only, in this instance, beam you straight into a zone (such as Atlas Park) using the character extractor to 'clone' your character.

I know this has been asked a million times, but here's where I get curious. Though it'd be boring, I'm sure we'd all like to be able to just see our characters moving and flying around any environment, empty or not. Then I was thinking - if we could get this far, would it be possible to use CheatEngine or something local to tweak the game into allowing the player DEV commands?

This would potentially leave a player with the ability to create his own enemies, grant themselves powers and generally have fun playing "solo".

Is this something far from our reach?

[The Fifth Horseman]

But, is it true that we do have enough local files to at the very least get into a zone?
I was wondering if it would be at all possible to use CheatEngine much like was done to enter the costume editor - only, in this instance, beam you straight into a zone (such as Atlas Park) using the character extractor to 'clone' your character.

To get into a zone. Not to stay alive in it.
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=7467.0

Then I was thinking - if we could get this far, would it be possible to use CheatEngine or something local to tweak the game into allowing the player DEV commands?
This would potentially leave a player with the ability to create his own enemies, grant themselves powers and generally have fun playing "solo".
Is this something far from our reach?

No, on the account that those commands were not performed by the client but rather sent to the server. Without a server, they won't work.

[downix]

To get into a zone. Not to stay alive in it.
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=7467.0No, on the account that those commands were not performed by the client but rather sent to the server. Without a server, they won't work.

Demorecords play commands back, however. Combine the two, you may have something.

[srmalloy]

Demorecords play commands back, however. Combine the two, you may have something.

That would depend a lot on what the CoH client demorecord playback did if its file read loop starved (i.e., the read for more data from the demo file doesn't get any data but the demo data hasn't closed out. It could throw an error, it could act like it got an end-of-file message, or it could hang waiting for the read to complete. Either of the first two are bad; the third would make it easy.

What you would need is something that sat 'closer' to the user than the CoH client and captured keystrokes/mouse input before they got to the client, and then translated those into demorecord commands written to the file the client's reading. If the CoH client's file read just hangs waiting for the read to complete, then this interface program could just write appropriate commands whenever it got them; if the CoH client errors or closes the demo if it hits an end-of-file condition, then the interface program has to write 'no action' commands to the demorecord file as fast or faster than the CoH client reads them so it doesn't run out of demofile.

There would be some limitations to a basic design; you wouldn't be able to trigger any mob-targeted power, and likely no location-targeted ones, although PBAoE powers might be workable. On the other hand, since you'd essentially be writing a demorecord for a character's actions, you could go back in and edit the demorecord to add specific targeted actions, and build up to a group of characters by merging multiple tracks together -- although that might be problematic, getting all the actions interleaved correctly.

[Codewalker]

The client reads the whole demo file into memory once at startup.

You could potentially overwrite the memory buffer, but doing that while a program is running (and looping through the instructions) is quite tricky. It would probably be more difficult to do that than to simply write a server that spoke the network protocol it's expecting. Plus there would be no UI or any kind of in-game interaction.

[Profit]

While I know it won't work due to how the game was coded, a thought I just had while reading this is to use a demorecord to load the zone information and cheat engine to enter the demorecorded "zone". Just a thought.

[Arcana]

While I know it won't work due to how the game was coded, a thought I just had while reading this is to use a demorecord to load the zone information and cheat engine to enter the demorecorded "zone". Just a thought.

Demorecords work because the recorded information happens to "work."  The game servers were running when the demorecord was recorded, ensuring that what happens is consistent with the game.  The first problem you'd face if you attempted to somehow navigate a zone without the game servers is what happens when you unlock the free camera in demorecords: you pass through walls and descend through the floor.  The part of the game client that does demo playback doesn't understand or perform collision detection.  That would make things like properly executing ground movement like sprinting or superspeeding problematic.

[Noyjitat]

Query: Has anyone tried using this on the segs server? They currently have a server that allows you to make a costume and login to outbreak. Last I checked all you can really do is turn around but can't move forward, jump, use powers etc. Perhaps with a server even in that limited of a fashion you can do something with this.

This was meant to be posted in the other thread linked by the 5th horseman. Please move this post.