Development Documentation for Building Hooks for Armada 2

posted on January 5th, 2011, 2:26 pm

If patch project has been discontinued, why not make patch project open source?

[Optec]

posted on January 5th, 2011, 3:22 pm

Last edited by Optec on January 5th, 2011, 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

we cant even move all the tooling required for the development of the loader from one dev pc to another without significant overhead - so a public release is far beyond our capability of maintenance. Sadly we are just a group of developers, not an entire company with an army of trainees to do the ugly work

posted on January 5th, 2011, 3:53 pm

I'm not asking for the tools, I'm asking for the code.

posted on January 5th, 2011, 4:15 pm

ah.. hm... ah.....

So i might have to write a sentance more.

The loader is not a stand alone application, which you can just path the code around for other people to add on (not that this would be that easy either way with most languages).

You cant just write AddToWeapon(New CoolFeature()). You require a long tool chain and a lot of experience to get information from Armada, extend the launcher and finally compile it. The Launcher can't be developed without its tooling. Otherwise we would have made the stuff public long ago.

posted on January 5th, 2011, 6:49 pm

Optec, just get one of your clones to do it.  They don't mind.

posted on January 6th, 2011, 1:22 pm

nah, optec isn't involved in the loader coding. still, would be great for a lot of other tasks though to have some cloned optecs at hand
for a basic loader or inject dll not really really much software would be required besides a compiler. that is just different for the fleet operations dll as for some functions 3rd party libraries are used like direct3d, fmod, compiler optimizations, tunngle and various others have to be configured first it usually takes some time when i have to set up everything again (after reinstalling windows for example).

with just a loader and an injected dll your work isn't done, it is just the beginning. again a sample for a loader for dll injection would be possible, but there are thousand samples out there for that already. the tricky part is to enhance current functions or add a new function. if you want to add a new weapon you have to add a ton of new functions. not only that, they have to be in the structure armada expects them plus you have to make armada also use them. it's not a trivial task, still even not for me.
i am willing to answer specific questions if someone experienced contacts me, but i can't help out beginners as it is just a too complex topic. also it is not armada specific knowledge you have to gain to understand how loader/injection/hooking works.

posted on January 6th, 2011, 2:55 pm

I have a C++ book that has a chapter on how to write DLLs.  If I had the source code for say, the replaceweapon, and/or maybe unitorpedo/unibeam and cannonimp, I could use those as a template for other weapon types.

By the way, how do I find thes loader samples that you say are out there?

[DOCa Cola]

posted on January 6th, 2011, 10:54 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on January 7th, 2011, 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

currently no source code releases in full or part are planned to the general public

tutorials or information about dll injection and code hooking can be found with google. it's not a too uncommon technique.

here someone shows how to inject a dll into notepad and showing a dialog box
YouTube
- [C++] Dll Injector

posted on January 11th, 2011, 1:15 am

Is there something like that in English and without the profanity?

posted on January 11th, 2011, 1:29 am

All of the souce code was in english and as to the profanity get over it. It wasnt ever a real cuss word.

posted on January 11th, 2011, 4:21 am

AddToWeapon(New CoolFeature())

Visual Studio 2008 is giving me a compiler error...
Says the function can't return that value. Something about converting an int to an explosion... 

Is there something like that in English and without the profanity?

As for the youtube tutorial it seems other then the gui that it's in English. Not sure about a cuss word showing up though... 

posted on January 11th, 2011, 10:32 pm

I take it that no one here is willing to write any sort of documentation on how to add a Hooks file to STA2.

posted on January 12th, 2011, 5:00 am

I take it that no one here is willing to write any sort of documentation on how to add a Hooks file to STA2.

i think you've been given plenty of help but you aren't understanding what is being said or you are being directed to...

posted on January 12th, 2011, 9:54 am

TL;DR: If you can't use x86 Assembly, you won't come far.