The only way to bring the game back.

[Nationaal-Socialistische Bamihap]

Someone needs to use the IP addresses the game client tries to connect to and redirect them (in form of a client side patch) to servers that can be hosted peer-to-peer or more probably on individual base.

If you are reading this and you yourself have some `hacking` skills, or know someone who has networking experience, give it a try.

I wish I hadn`t quit my IT career so I could`ve done it myself instead of asking.

Keep us posted if you take the challenge, you will be a hero to the community!

[smbaseball2005]

I looked into some of the code in ida well barley. They have it to where it’s like it only can connect to a uk like server so it can only be hosted I guess from like jagex company building like there servers

[Nationaal-Socialistische Bamihap]

Originally posted by smbaseball2005:

I looked into some of the code in ida well barley. They have it to where it’s like it only can connect to a uk like server so it can only be hosted I guess from like jagex company building like there servers

So we need to edit that IP, or redirect it with something.

[ADK]

If you want to "hi-jack" the IP address used, the easiest is to make a VPN server/service, which forms a private network, where this IP address is used. More likely this game points to a FQDN (hostname, DNS name) and they are even easier to "hack around".

But you still have the problem of reverse engineering the network protocol and reverse engineering the entire server software. I work with network and servers but I code very little.
If I could get a hold of the server binary (or source code) I could probably build the hosting infrastructure.

[smbaseball2005]

If you put all the game files into ida like the.PYD and .DLL and etc you can see all of the I guess the strings like example Move forward, Jump, chunk loader, network, death, placeblock and etc but you can’t see any of the base code of it unless you can reverse engineer it

[Nationaal-Socialistische Bamihap]

So redirecting the IP addresses should work but is best done outside of the game code itself.
We can decode what the client sends to the server. But we do not know server to client information right? Reverse engineering would have been much easier if the servers would still be up. And how do we host the servers on that redirected IP anyways? Since there have never been community servers, we do not possess the server software.
Or do we? Would any of the existing community host revivals of the game have server software that would be compatible with our Steam client? (possibly after some notifications)
If we can find an old server version with similar network programming as the current one, that would be our best guess to start work with.

The goal is to have a licensed version on Steam of the latest version that we can play with as few client side modifications as possible. So redirecting the IPs outside of the game code, with a custom DNS redirection would be best.

If the fix will require too difficult and too much client-side patching it will not attract many old players. There is many private servers hosting Ace of Spades around now, but on top of being unlicensed and thus technically illegal in some countries, also dividing up the community. The publishers of this game will also not be able the efforts as those people, and even if they do they will see it as negative.