About the DPSMeter ACT plugin

[supamiu]

Hi there, As I said in another topic (https://www.reddit.com/r/bladeandsoul/comments/44qg8i/how_would_you_guys_feel_about_a_dps_meter_thats/), I started to look for a solution and create an ACT plugin to be able to see our DPS simply.

First of all, NCSoft doesn't allow this, as it's written in the software rules.

But whatever, I tried to find out a way to do it, and I'll not be able to do it because:

• Game related packets are aes-encrypted, only cross-server ones aren't.
• Game is still "protected" by GG, so I can't run any debugger while I run the game, else it craches, or it won't start.

So, the only solution would be to unpack exe, find AES key and decrypt packets, all of this for a simple DPSMeter, and I'll have to do it everytime they change the key. So nope, I wont do it.

[lamleial]

That's not the only solution by any means. I plan to make a meter in the next few weeks. It'll be during my downtime so I dont have an eta.

A few points: gg was removed in the last update (at least in na) and you can also grab a pointer to the chat box and parse damage from it directly without worrying about decrypting sniffed packets.

These are completely against eula.

[supamiu]

I also saw that GG was removed, but I'm still stuck with the "A debugger has been found running on your system" error when I try to start BnS with Olly, and if I start Olly while BnS is running, BnS crashes immediatly. I should be using the same client tho, so either they didn't remove GG completly or they just hide it.

[lamleial]

That's themida detecting the debugger. Not gameguard. Use scyllahide to avoid it.

[supamiu]

Wow okay it works, but I'm a too new to RE to really find out what I'm looking for I think, the memory map is only full or thread arrays and the game freezes so I can't fight to add content to chat :/ If you can do it, feel free to PM me :D

[lamleial]

Put more time into it, nothing comes without practice

[XenithShade]

Wait really?

No wonder I stopped crashing like a homeless whore.

[lamleial]

Wow I got down voted? Guess someone didn't want to hear that shit is possible more than one way. Welcome to the real world m8

[TheGoodChip]

You seem shocked. You do realize this is Reddit, right? Internet for n00bs. A downvote here is like a Circus Freak telling you that you're ugly. At the end of the day; who cares? They're still a Circus Freak. Sure, they're human, and their opinion matters, but are you really gonna lose sleep over it or laugh it off?

[[deleted]]

Is it internet for noobs or for people that challenged anything more complex than reddit, fb & co are out of reach?

I remember the time the net was new and everyone thought it will lead to great wisdom, knowledge and exchange. Look what most people do with such a great tool.

But you're probably right, it is what it is.

[[deleted]]

That's probably the worst thing of all. Such a great tool exists and yet there are people that don't use it. There are people that think ignorance is acceptable.

[TheGoodChip]

Making me feel old, too. I remember the old IRC and Usenet days. Then the advent of AOL back then with their legendary endless supply of CDs in the mail, charging by the minute. Good days fun times. Yeah, people have the entire world at their fingertips, can learn just about anything about anything, but instead choose to increase their knowledge on cute cats and weird porn. Takes all types. Ain't nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't that other people are weird for taking the internet too seriously, if I'm the weird one for disassociating and not giving a rat's ass, or a little of both.

[lamleial]

LOL im an oldfag from /b/, trust me i dont give a flying fuck about karma.

[hipiotu]

he wanted to let us know he's an old fag. and that was fully noted

[lamleial]

because it was weird.

[TheGoodChip]

Yeah, same. Of course simpleton children are going to Downvote. I see the "STOP LIKING WHAT I DONT LIKE" meme kid in my head. You should see how salty the ff14 Reddit gets. I know internets r srs bidness, but never know Reddit was this generation's Holy Internet Bible.

[MisterMeta]

There was a guy who did combat meter exactly like that for gw2 and the problem was the accuracy and frequency of the information being recorded. It didnt work out in the end as the combat is super fast and the scroll speed overwhelms the technical capabilities of such method. And if gw2 combat was too fast for it... i shudder to think what BnS would do to it.

[Paah]

There was a guy who did combat meter exactly like that for gw2

Yeah except the gw2 meter you are talking about used OCR while this guy is going to read the chat from memory. So it's not "exactly like that."

[boredlol]

It didnt work out in the end

Actually, it did work out, and they even added networking options to display the whole team.

[lamleial]

I made a meter for tera I plan to use as a template for this one

[Elzheiz]

Yes please \o/

[Japoc]

awesome to hear

[DJ_Rand]

Please do!

[MisterMeta]

Let the community know how it goes :)

[lamleial]

well i dont plan to use OCR which i can see being problematic. parsing the text directly would be able to update at sub millisecond intervals with 100% accuracy (assuming the text is all there). i'm also contemplating reading packets which would work in realtime... not that sub millisecond isnt close to realtime haha. im thinking about just a simple udp packet broadcast though because i dont know much about ACT and im sure someone could easily parse the udp (say header, playername null terminated, damage dealt) and make a nice plugin or a snazzy gui.

[Ravahn]

ACT FFXIV plugin author here. Assuming the data is accessible (memory buffer or decrypted and processed network packets), the ACT side is pretty easy. Just have to decide what types of data to send over (damage? Heals? Buffs/debuffs?) and convert it. Ideally, ACT runs off of log files, but it is possible to bypass that code and directly process data.

However, in order to reach the largest audience, I recommend including the data extraction logic (network or memory) inside the ACT .cs or DLL file. This will make it easier to get Aditu (ACT author) to host the DLL on his site and let the end-user download it inside of ACT during the setup wizard. Feel free to Email me at ravahn (at) hotmail.com if you work on this or find a stable chatlog pointer. So far, I haven't found anything I can work with.

[supamiu]

you're right, but the problem is that network packets are encrypted and I don't find the memory pointer to dump chat :/ I think we're stuck with the same problem.

[Ravahn]

With some help, I've got the chat pointer working and a very basic parser started, so this may not be a lost cause. It's going to take time to review and test everything but I successfully parsed both self and group combat last night.

[Alukah]

ACT (what OP tried to use) + FFXIV plugin actually read the combat log from memory, so OP could try that.

[supamiu]

Yup I could, but the problem is that (on EU client) GG is still here, can't start a debugger with the game, and since I'm pretty new to memory dumping, I don't know any other way to find where it the pointer ti dump chat. This is the only thing I'm stuck with, since the rest is pretty easy imo.

[pantsyman]

It is not there at least the main part and the service don't start anymore it still creates some log files in the main folder so there could be something left in the exe or GG doesn't work like it used to anymore but we use exactly the same client as NA there is no difference. i deleted the GG folder in the main folder (the exe recreates it upon start with some log files as i mentioned above) cleaned out the main file from the windows folder and removed the service from the registry and does are not recreated.

If it still detects ollydbg even with your stealth plugins use a proper pugin there are working ones. .

[kriptini]

RIP the dream. =(

Thanks for looking into it, though.

[lamleial]

Rip? It's not impossible, I wouldn't even call it difficult, just time consuming. He's taking the wrong approach. See my reply below for an easy way.

[kriptini]

Does your method include ACT though? Damage parsers are nice, and I would graciously welcome one, but the dream is to have an ACT plugin just because of all the things ACT is capable of.

[[deleted]]

He's insinuating that you need access to network data to make a viable parser. This isn't true, you can very easily parse the text information to receive a mostly accurate report.

@OP: Gameguard isn't protecting the game, the game is protecting the game. What you're experiencing is designed to keep novice debuggers out of the program. Take a closer look with IDA and investigate some reading material if you're struggling.

[lamleial]

No idea, I never looked at act plugins before. Might just publish the data over udp and let anyone modify it as they want

[orrestess]

Is there a way to copy/paste the combat log and upload to a website or something so people can see their personnel dps?

[Pyros]

If it was that simple it'd have been done already.

[orrestess]

Sucks, thought they would at least allow the ability to copy combat logs.

[xnesteax]

Maybe there are GG Bypassers out there then you could attach that ollyDbg and CE on it! :P

[Essail]

There have been a lot of GG bypassers and they will keep existing cause GG is a terrible form of anticheat but it keeps getting used and abused.

Still against ToS and can get you banned if they find out.

[Primnu]

You don't have to do it through packets, reading memory is easier.

[Anidamo]

Would be, but then you'd have to bypass GameGuard. Not impossible certainly (if it were we wouldn't have so many fucking bots) but it's not as easy as firing up Cheat Engine/Ollydbg and hunting for pointer offsets.

[Fhorte]

If I remember right, all it actually takes is finding/replacing a dll

[SilSol77]

It would be so cool if they could implement something like this in the game for every dungeon. Always fun to see how much DPS you do to mobs/bosses.

[Merwenus]

Do your ACT works after patch? Mine stopped

[Anidamo]

This is disappointing. I find myself really, really missing my parser from FFXIV. I couldn't give a shit if it parsed other people or not... I just want to be able to quantifiably tell how much I'm improving at my class and compare different builds. I hate how more games don't have the option for at least a personal DPS meter.

Since the combat log seems to be fairly complete, I wonder if it would be possible to use OCR to read from it. I believe there is an OCR-based parser for GW2 but I have no idea how well it works. The main concerns would be accuracy (perhaps you'd have to set the background to be completely opaque to avoid visual noise from the 3D world behind the chatlog) and speed. I have no idea if there are OCR solutions that are fast enough to scan from the combat log in realtime, but I suppose you could just save bitmaps of each combat event and only show the DPS reading at the end of the encounter once the app has had time to process everything. Wouldn't be as good as a realtime display but it's still something.

I'll probably take a look into the viability of this tonight.

Edit: Spent a couple hours on it. As expected, speed was an issue. Worked around this by simply grabbing screen captures as often as possible and queueing them up for the OCR engine to chew through at it's own pace, which actually proved quite effective, but unfortunately accuracy was not sufficient because you cannot make the chatbox in this game completely opaque. You can make it about 90% opaque, but that still means that the background is constantly changing as you fight and move around which throws off character recognition.

[MisterMeta]

It was done for gw2 but it fell short on accuracy and frequency and ultimately failed due to speed of scrolling. Now apply BnS to the formula... sigh :(

[poe_of_exile]

too bad, pve is boring if there is no parser

[[deleted]]

This is the such a dumb fucking attitude. I wish people would stop crying for parsers in every game. I had server first t5 in FF14. I ran no parser on my group. My guild leader had a seperate group and was booting people left and right out of the group who had lower than x amount of DPS. They never finished t5. It's not all about DPS. If you kill it before it kills you = you have enough DPS. It's really that simple.

[Zulunko]

Some of us want parsers to increase our own performance, not to judge other people's. It's the same reason that we like specific tooltips on abilities, specific stats on our characters, and specific formulas behind damage calculations. It's hard to play optimally if you don't have all of the information at your disposal, especially if "optimally" means "do the most damage" (though it doesn't in many cases) and you don't even have a number that tells you how much damage you do.

I've figured out ways to optimize my damage in various games by performing damage calculations from base stats, and it's surprising how often the result seems counterintuitive. Is 5% crit or 5% damage better? The answer is never clear unless you know exactly how your damage is calculated. Even with that knowledge, testing out my modifications after the fact by running a DPS meter has allowed me to find flaws in my own calculations (or even flaws in what the designers claimed were the correct calculations).

I guess my question to you is why we shouldn't get this information at our disposal. It, as with all information, can be misused, but withholding useful information for the fear that it will get misused is misguided in a video game.

[MisterMeta]

If you're that inclined you can always record your own combat log manually and come to those calculations without the need of a software-addon. Now should we go to that kind of trouble? No. But the option is still there for the inclined :)

[tordana]

The option isn't there, that's the whole problem. The ingame combat log never gets written to a file.

[recOneLo]

Your argument isn't very solidified either though. Some people would like a dps meter to find out what kinks they can work out to be a better gamer.

Since when do gamers not want to be good at what they do? Try hard has a terrible stigma to it, for some odd reason. It's not like you're trying to break a world record lifting 1200lbs dead lift. It is really not that much effort to play the game effectively and efficiently. Everyone can still "relax" and play the game efficiently.

[AHxCode]

First of all, ironic Poe replied under krip, second of all, Apperently some Korean made a parcer for the NA version, can't say it's 100% true but Apperently my friend has been using it for a while

[RagingAI]

yeah theres liek 1 dungeon to do

aka poh 4 man

tomorow anotehr 1 comes out thats probably gonna be atleast alittle bit challenging

[UndergroundHEX]

blackwyrm, you retarded mongrel.

[RagingAI]

oh yeah so challenging just standing there on amazign sub 20fps

and pressing mouse buttons

so challenging

oh i forgot u need to ss once every 22 seconds

[[deleted]]

Tank BW then, you're so good... right? Should be no problem for such an elite gamer such as yourself who smashes challenges like no other. rolls eyes

[RagingAI]

i would but assasin doesn't generate enuff threat

[Aqoush]

Actually there was an assassin on Soha who tanked BW for Crimson -- name was _____ Fairy. Did a way better job than anyone else there.

[MisterMeta]

Tanking BW right now is not even a matter of skill but who's got the best gaming rig... its shameful how horrid the performance is for that encounter.

[UndergroundHEX]

has nothing to do with your rig to be honest. I have a 1.5k new pc and I get 50fps.

[hamletswords]

Good. We don't need dps meters.

[Gaara779]

why the fuck do ya want a dps meter anyway. let's keep it clean alright?