How bnetd Developers Reverse Engineered Battle.net

battlebot writes: "O'Reilly's ONlamp.com is running an interview with the bnetd developers that goes into great detail about how exactly they reverse-engineered Battle.net. This is by the same guy who wrote the recent Salon article, though is far more technical. They talk a little bit about their legal troubles too, and even sheepishly admit that perhaps talking to a lawyer earlier in the process would have been a good idea. Has this project been successfully squashed?"

Comments

Article says

[flewp]

BNETD supports all the major features of battle.net, such as chat, channels, user icons, and gameplay! Well I'd sure hope it does!

The real question

[Dynedain]

The article says that they have made BNETD virtually indistinguishable from the real battlenet through reverse engineering. What I wanna know is, what function did they assign to the gem in the Diablo 2 client?

Re:The real question

[Malicious]

I think, that Blizzard should have an anti-trust lawsuit brought against them, for packaging the Battle.net connection software, in with their software, thus cripiling their competitors, and creating an online multiplayer monopoly.

Battlenet Clone HowTO

[DarkHelmet]

...that goes into great detail about how exactly they reverse-engineered Battle.net.

1. Install packet sniffer on local network.
2. Read lots of 1's and 0's into a huge dump file
3. Familiarize yourself with UDP.
4. Tear out clump of hair as stress relief.
5. Create nifty diagrams that show the battlenet server as a black box with the game that you and your buddy have made online as the two other pieces.
6. Look at the responses that the black box sends back to each of the machines.
7. Ponder on whether or not a monkey would be a good programmer since a tail in addition to two hands that can hit those hard-to-reach keys.
8. Create a prototype program that relays game packets from two client boxes.
9. Play lots of StarCraft through this box.
10. Debug lots and lots.
11. Decide against implimenting cheats on the server box against your other cohorts that are helping you develop this
12. Create a chat room interface.
13. Do final testing on the program.
14. Program into the server daemon random insult messages that will be sent to all of your friend programmers while testing, making them abandon the project out of anger.
15. Profit.

That was easy enough!

Yeah, bnetd is TOTALLY DEAD.

[Wakko Warner]

Yes, BNETD is completely dead. The DMCA has prevailed.

- A.P.

Re:It really sucks.

[baywulf]

Compaq had to pick virgin programmers that had no knowledge of IBM's code.

AI think it is safe to assume more programmers are virgin.