2004 RuneScape fit a multiplayer RPG into 56k dial-up

Post by megagpt3 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #38

I love how when Runescape gets posted on here, there’s always a few proud stories of how people cheated. Today one is even admitting to RWT (real world trading) for tens of thousands of $, when elsewhere one shuts up about it because cheaters in multiplayer gaming are regarded as the antisocial scum that make the game worse for everybody else. It’s not really something to brag about. I guess one thing antisocial peop…

Post by npunt » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

saejox wrote: post #23

Ultima online released in 1997 and required only a 28k modem. I also would argue it was a more complex game.

Post by alex1138 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 8:35 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #21

I wish the author got more into the weeds of anitcheat and how it evolved over time. Jagex was banning bots based on mouse movement heuristics in like 2005. 20 years later and there's some JS framework on the front page here heralding that same kind of analysis as some revolutionary new approach. I can only imagine what the modern anticheat engine entails, especially in the era of LLMs that can reliably emulate a hum…

Post by Ekaros » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 8:46 AM UTC

jonathanlydall wrote: post #54

stux wrote: post #13

> Before any networking occurs, the client runs a breadth-first search using the local collision map to build a path from where you are to where you clicked, and then writes the packet for the server to read. [...] The packet contains the absolute position of the first waypoint in the path, followed by the delta of each waypoint in the path against the first one How come the client sends waypoints rather than just th…

Interesting, when I was a WoW GM our special “GM WoW Client” contained a lot of features that QA would use. One of these was showing NPC pathing in the form of dots with lines in between. At any time the WoW client would know next 5 or so waypoints of a mob that was idle patrolling. I guess it’s more efficient to send a batch of waypoints occasionally than one at a time more regularly. It was a interesting watching b…

Post by JojiDoesCode » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote: post #32

akersten wrote: post #21

I wish the author got more into the weeds of anitcheat and how it evolved over time. Jagex was banning bots based on mouse movement heuristics in like 2005. 20 years later and there's some JS framework on the front page here heralding that same kind of analysis as some revolutionary new approach. I can only imagine what the modern anticheat engine entails, especially in the era of LLMs that can reliably emulate a hum…

I farmed tens of thousands of us dollars in modern RuneScape by unhooking the mousehook. It worked for decades. Find call to `SetWindowsHookEx` -> Find dword (`HHOOK`) it returns -> Inject module that calls `UnhookWindowsHookEx((HHOOK)(module_base + hhook_rva));` -> profit. Jagex has done some interesting things, but without fail, there is a blunder accompanying each.