Packet structure

[Roadkill]

Been looking for a while now, thought this would be a good place to ask.

Does anyone know the packet structure for things such as /tells? Been working on a project which Sony would find "dubious" of nature I'm sure heh, but would like some output displayed directly to my own screen in the form of tells. Does anyone here already know the packet structure for this? The plan is for my external program to be able to contruct and send /tells to my EQ client. They would be displayed in my chat window something like this:

MYPROG tells you, "You've got mail!"

or something like that heh. Basically I want to have a way of informing me of outside of EQ events without logging out. The program to do this can get a lot more complicated than just simple e-mail notes... but I've gotta start off simple first.

Thanks :)

[casey]

afaik, the eq protocol maintaines sequencing numbers, and it would be non-trivial to send packets that would be accepted by the client, since it would not be in sequence, or you would be displacing real packets by hijacking the sequence numbers. Another matter to look at is whether or not tells generate acknowledgements, you would need to block those specific ACK's as to not tip off the servers that you are injecting packets into the datastream.

[Roadkill]

Thank you for the info. Aye, I was just thinking about the ACK problem. The sequence thing I didn't think about. Think this would work if I were to sort-of piggy-back my info on an existing /tell coming in? Or course, that kinda changes the usefulness of what I'm trying to do.

[KaL]

Audio cues would probably be easiest... trigger some .wavs or hook up some voice synthesis action.

KaL

[Pyzjn]

Roadkill

Take a look at www.xylobot.com

It would be trivial to write a macro script to do almost anything you want involving tells and such.

Hell if you can write com object's you can write a small app that runs within eq that would work with MSN Messenger.

[Dedpoet]

I bet Sony could make a -ton- of money by putting a little interface in the client that went to places like pizzahut.com, your_local_chinese_place.com, etc. I thought of this one day while glued to my chair and not even wanting to step away to order a pie. Capitalize on the gamer's laziness, yep...charge a buck commission on every order. They would rake it in.

[Roadkill]

LOL!

/order

order - usage
/order [company] [toppings] [breadsticks?]

/order PizzaHut olives,mushrooms,beef no

Pizzahut tells you, "$25, will be there in 45minutes or less".

[S_B_R]

I always wanted a way to cummincate with people using ICQ/AIM/MSN/etc while they were ingame and vice versa...

I wrote a little cgi script that read my everquest log and sent /gu chat to a webpage. That way I could leave my Mule logged in and I could keep up on what was going on in /gu while I was at work. But it was really clunky and I kinda lost interest in it.

[Roadkill]

The exact opposite of that is what I wanted to do. Instead of /gu going to a web page, I wanted some medium (web page, text file, progromatic messages, etc) going to EQ. So that while in EQ, I would get a message (through a /tell or something like that) from my external program. Not sure if it's possible though, as it's sounding to be quite difficult (with syncing and ACKs and such to worry about).

[RSB]

Run EQ in EQW and then just access that stuff normally. I think you are trying to get overly complicated.

RSB

[Pyzjn]

Assuming that using EQW as RSB suggested isnt an option maybe if you explained what you are trying to do we cold give you more specific help Roadkill.

[high_jeeves]

The only way I see to succeed in "injecting" these packets into the EQ packet stream would be to go with a "man in the middle" type scheme... both the client and the server would have to see unintterupted sequence/ack information. Some of the packets in the EQ protocol are broken into multiple UDP packets, and stiched together based on their sequence info (and a few other things). If you started to mess around with this information, you could seriously screw up the client. Your best bet is definitely EQW :)

--Jeeves

[Sum_Yung_Gai]

packets = teh suck.
try dinput.

[Exo]

EQW allows you to do a lot of fun stuff with EQ that was more difficult to do before.

My Typical game setting is now

Monitor 1: EQW, with winamp and ICQ.
Monitor 2: EQW, ShowEQ (through X-server)

I really want to recommend everyone look into X-server that doesn't know what it is or what it does. I had in the past pretty much done all the ShowEQ stuff for myself, 3 roomies, a friend up the road, and another friend in the next state. I now simply host a linux server that they all run ShowEQ from. When things break they get theirs when I get mine :P Plus I don't have to maintain all those Linux machines for them since they only know windows.

P.S. no you can't leech off my server too, I don't know you well enough to give you a normal account let alone root.