This is a very random and maybe a bit strange question that i thought of at 3AM. I was thinking about how code could make my day to day life easier. Every morning I wake up, open chrome to the facebook conversations with my boyfriend, and write "good morning". And thats when i thought about this hypothetical project(just out of curiosity, I wouldn't use it haha): making a code that i can just run that does all of this for me.
I could have a html file that could redirect to the facebook link(https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/boyfriend_name). But how would I go on to make the code open this file, then move the mouse to where its supposed to go (the white area where the user inputs the text) then insert the text then press send?
I'm not asking for any code help as I can imagine that is too much, but my question is: could this be achievable in C++?(This is what we've been studying at school so far). If not, what coding language should I use? Is the idea achievable without a vast knowledge in computer science? If yes, have you got any sources about opening files using C++, moving cursor etc.
Note:The OS this would happen on is Windows 10
To do what you want is possible by using AutoIT and to use it from C++ you can try AutoITX for C++. With AutoIT it's possible to detect windows, move the mouse and insert text, although a web page is like a blackbox to it, so you'll have to rely on relative pixel coordinates (it might not be very robust).
Well, lately I have found a very interesting article about Map Hacks in online games.
After reading it I read they used a memory scanner to look for images in the memory.
How would they accomplish such a program, is there a solution for this freely available?
if not how would I code it in C++? How can I know a piece of memory is an "image"?
I can load my own DLL into the process so that shouldn't be a big issue..
To answer your questions:
A memory scanner uses OS apis to query memory from another process and perform searches for patterns or differences. A great tool for this is cheat engine.
The tool mentioned in the article visualizes the memory by coloring pixels according to the value of the bytes in memory. The alignment still needs to be done manually and could be very time consuming. I don't think the mentioned program was ever released.
The main problem is that you can't know that a particular piece of memory is supposed to be a map. Any big regular structure could look like one when colorized and aligned. Finding the actual piece of memory you are looking for is very hard.
Additional Info:
A property map in a game is very dynamic. If units or something moves the visibility has to update. So the actual format of a map like this is most likely a binary bitmap with no specific image format (png,jpg,...).
I personally find the approach to look for a map structure in memory is a very inefficient and time consuming approach. It's beatuful to show to people that have no idea about reverse engineering, but to me seems very impractical. The approach which is best totally depends on the game and your creativity.
I hope I can help you with the following example how I made a map hack for starcraft 2.
My idea was to load up a replay of a game, where I had full view of the map and find the difference to loading up a normal game where my vision is restricted. I switched a couple of times between replay and normal game and could indeed find a state variable that was 0 on normal game and 1 on replay (a common tool for finding memory like this is cheat engine).
Next I loaded the game up in a debugger and put a memory access breakpoint on this state variable. Now when loading up a normal game I would change the value when it is accessed while the map was loading. Through some trial and error I was able to find the correct location that was responsible for revealing the minimap and real map. The only task left was to create a dll that detours the code location and make sure the map is always revealed on every mapload.
Reply to typ1232: You mention that it's hard and impractical to find the map structure in memory. Heres a method I have had great success with: Load up a map in any game with fog of war, like StarCraft 2. Take a dump of the memory and save it. Send out troops/units and reveal as much of the previously undiscovered map and take another memory dump. Compare the two dumps and look closer at the areas in memory where there are a high frequency of changes. This is likely to be where the map is stored.
Sorry if I'm doing it wrong, new to stackoverflow :)
This might be a bit broader answer to the subject of "finding data" but there are binary analysis tools out there. For example, ..cantor.dust.. is a binary visualization tool (though its only in beta the idea remains the same). You can search for different patterns within a memory dump for "images" or structures. Youtube cantor dust and the creator did a presentation at DerbyCon of how he used it to find EFI structures to recreate an exploit of a PNG parser at the EFI level.
I also think the saving two memory states of visible map vs limited visibility map and search for the changes is viable, if not the best option, I just am trying to point out an alternative.
I am writing a windows program (no mfc) and need to output a status line to the operator every few seconds or so. I tried using rich text boxes but after so many hours it seems to hang up. Does anybody have an suggestions on what I can use instead?
People mentioned that my buffers might have been exhausted. I thought I had planned for that. After I had about 1000 lines displayed I would take the first 500 and remove them using the select and cut options in rich text boxes. I still ran into the same problem.
This question appears relevant, and this one too. But they don't give any concrete recommendations for an alternative to rich text boxes.
You might try the Scintilla control (scintilla.org) which does not appear to have any hard limitations on text size. It has a permissive license. It is used by many text editors such as Notepad++, Notepad2, Code::Blocks, FlashDevelop. I haven't tried it personally but there from the documentation it looks easy to use it in a Windows API application. Of course, it might be overkill for your purposes.
If you keep appending to the text in the control every few seconds for hours then you are probably running into some memory constraint on the control or the process. I think you would have this problem with any control you choose given update frequence and how long you're running the program.
Have you considered implementing a simple circular buffer for the content of the text box? Say only keep the last hour's messages. You could maintain a separate log file for history if the operator needed to go back in time for hours.
I ended up writing my own control to do this, essentially duplicating the Output window in Visual Studio. It was a success, but it ended up being much more code than I thought it would be when I started - I insisted on features such as auto-scrolling when the cursor was on the last line, select/copy, bold text, etc. It was backed by a std::deque so I could limit the number of lines stored for the window.
Unfortunately the code belongs to a former employer so I can't share it here.
Hi so i'm making a game through the console window, and i was wondering if there was any way to just get maybe one or two text character's placement to change or disappear. Usually to accomplish this i would have to tell the console to re-type every single character and line all over again, but this just takes to long (1 second fps plus .5 second time spent re-typing the scene).
Is there some way i could re-fresh or change one or two lines or 'characters' seen on the console so so much time is not spent on waiting for the console to re-typing my 24 lines, each a string? (the scene made up of text)
Thanks! =)
btw... does anyone remember that little easter egg in windows which was an entire star wars movie made out of text in the console?? I want the game be smooth like that!
You'll need to use an external library to interface with the console as C++ doesn't have these capabilities, but it is possible.
My old goto for this sort of thing is ncurses. It's straightforward, quick to set up, and cross-platform. But it's old, and its age shows. (If you're on windows you'll have to use pdcurses; same capabilities, different package).
There are also console-specific ways of doing this. In particular, Windows provides an API for performing these sorts of actions.
You need ncurses library.
See console print w/o scrolling for reasons and examples.
Also google for the source to the rogue/urogue/nethack games which do that already.
I’m teaching an entry-level C++ programming class. We only use iostream in the class (No GUI). It seems like students are not so excited to printout strings and numbers to their console. (Most students even never used the console before.) It is hard to motivate or convey the excitement of programming by showing strings in their console.
What would be a good and exciting console program that can be written by C++ beginners? I’m looking for something doable with basic C++ skill + a bit challenging + very exciting, which can motivate students to learn programming languages.
Any comments will be appreciated.
When I taught an undergrad intro course, we did the Game of Fifteen in straight C as the third homework project. It's pretty well scoped, and it's a game, so there's some inherent motivation there.
Back when I taught, I made an early project be an ATM machine.
Text-only interface, with basic operations like withdraw, deposit, query balance, transfer between accounts, etc.
It was something that everyone was already familiar with, it didn't take huge amounts of programming time, but it did help students feel like it was a practical and realistic program.
Other similar ideas would be a cash-register (handle refunds, coupons, items priced by the pound, sales-tax, store specials, etc, etc), or a cell-phone billing program (separate daytime, night, and weekend minutes, bill text messages, picture messages separately, etc).
How about a system that generates a set of poker hands from a deck? While clearly defined, the intricacies of ensuring no duplicate cards etc, make it a good entry level challenge.
As an extension, you could have the system take an input as to whether you want to bet or fold, and effectively play a poker game.
Finally, a good design would allow them to switch the console for a gui front-end later on (e.g. intermediate class).
I always enjoyed problems where there's a real world purpose for doing it. Something like calculating a mathematical equation, or a range of prime numbers. A lot of stuff on ProjectEuler would be good, I would think. Not everybody likes math (but then again, it's kind of a necessary thing for computer science!).
Instead of just printing to the screen you could make ascii animations.
Introduce your students to pipes and filters. Create a useful utility that takes data from stdin and directs its output to stdout. Create another utility that does something else using that same protocol. Create a third utility. Demonstrate how robustly the utilities can work together.
For example, create a clone of the GNU head and tee utilities, and perhaps add a new utility called cap which capitalizes letters. Then demonstrate how you can get the first 3 lines of a text file capitalized and tee'd to a file and stdout. Next, demonstrate how you use the same utilities, without changing a single line of code, to take the first 5 lines of a file and output to the screen the capitalized letters and to a file the original letters.
When I took C++ we had to replicate a Theseus and the Minotaur game. It lends well to outputting multiple lines to the console to form something "graphical" and it's easily based on a set of implemented rules.
I've had to program a Tower of Hanoi game in the console before, I found that quite fun. It requires use of basic data structures, user input, checking for game end conditions so it would be good for a beginner I believe.
New programming students usually find graphical programs to be the most exciting.
It doesn't have to be anything really advanced, just being able to manipulate pixels and stuff should be enough to keep them interested. Making a simple graphic class around SDL should be ok. Maybe something like this:
int main()
{
GraphicWindow graphic;
graphic.setPixel(10,20,GraphicWindow::Red);
graphic.idle();
}
Then you give out assignments like "implement a drawRect function" etc.
Perhaps a text-only version of the Lunar Lander game. You could do full ASCII art and animations (with ncurses, perhaps) as an advanced exercise, but even in a pure text form it can be interesting.
I recall playing the version that ran on the HP 67 calculator, and it was entertaining with only a seven segment display to work with.
I vaguely recall a version that probably ran on an ALTAIR 8800 written in MITS/Microsoft BASIC that used the leading part of the line to show height above ground as ASCII art, with your prompt for the next tick's burn at the right.
Another traditional choice would be to implement Hunt the Wumpus, or for the ambitious, Battleship.
One of my first programming class had a long homework about implementing a (reduced) Monopoly game.
You can use chained lists for the board.
You can use Inheritance for board tiles.
You need some logic to process players turns.
It was probably the first project I've done in CS that I could talk about to my non-tech friends and generate some interest.