.hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

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Coldbird
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.hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coldbird »

Even if such topics are hated in general... :lol:
I might just pull a admins leg here by posting todays latest work of mine.

lobby server
Image

ps2 fragment
Image

Summing up todays work (more to come tomorrow..... i hope. :) )....

I've reversed a bit of the Area Server for PC and created a proper online patched version of .hack fragment which connects to my own lobby server successfully.

To my surprise, the Area Server, Lobby Server AND Fragment Client hold the same packet switch table...
Which means... Area Server contains data about the Lobby Server... Fragment Client does too...

Don't ask me why... but its very helpful...
The packets transmitted between Area, Lobby and Client share a common 4-byte-header consisting of 2B Big Endian Length and 2B Big Endian Opcode...

I hope those screens are enough proof for now to keep this topic away from the admins lockhammer. :o
For those having no idea about the meaning of the client screen... it's a response timeout error from the lobby server...
This is proof I've got past the DNAS check of the game and had a actual connection to my lobby. :)
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AuraTwilight
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IT WAS OVER 9000!
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by AuraTwilight »

Wow, someone actually giving real results instead of just talking about copyright infringement, 2D RPGMaker, or petitions.
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Coldbird
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coldbird »

AuraTwilight wrote:Wow, someone actually giving real results instead of just talking about copyright infringement, 2D RPGMaker, or petitions.
That coming from you AT means a lot to me. :)

To some more infos, shall we?

I'm using a UNMODIFIED PS2 here to boot this thing, no modchip, no opening of the console, no money invested into swap magic.
What I'm using to go online with Fragment is a combination of FreeMCBoot + uLaunchELF + ESR Driver Activator.

To the naysayers that know ESR, yes I know Fragment isn't compatible with ESR and shouldn't work... but I've found a workaround so it does boot properly. :lol:

For some reason... if you boot uLaunchELF with FMCB, activate the ESR disc by using the ESR Driver Activator (NOT THE LAUNCHER!) and then manually start the Fragment Disc with uLaunchELF, it will work just great.

No bugs, all okay, even online mode works as I've shown you guys here...

I think, this is the easiest way Fragment has been made accessable to everyone so far.

And to those that didn't buy Fragment... my hack will work on pirated copies too... no avoiding that... even though I'd prefer if the users just bought and ripped their discs manually... :?

Another thing I do want to ask for in here even though I know the chances are horribly slim.
Right now I'm coding this thing by reverse engineering all the components we have of .hack fragment left, namely the ps2 game and the pc area server...

It would be a tremendous help if a .hack fragment veteran that played on the japanese servers could provide a packetlog, I doubt such a thing like a packetlog exists and even if it did I doubt its still in existence now-a-days...

But if someone really has anything of the likes, any bit of fragment information I can get would help me in moving this thing closer to the real deal. Also, I've got a job for bruteforcers, if they are up to it, I need as many of them as I can get.

Greets!
Mewster
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Mewster »

Coldbird wrote:Also, I've got a job for bruteforcers, if they are up to it, I need as many of them as I can get.

My cpu is at your service!
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Coldbird
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coldbird »

Mewster wrote:My cpu is at your service!
Someone else to join the bruteforce group? I will start the all-out-attack once I got 10 of them so we can split the load properly.
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Coldbird
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coldbird »

Heres comes the daily update~

I must thank CC2 for not taking the area server download offline even after years of the whole game being down and the Area Server being useless because of that... cause it really helped me a lot. :lol:

I've discovered the network packet decryption function already, aswell as the packet checksum algorithms (being a lousy xor-algo). :lol:

I also discovered why there are only 2 packet opcodes in the whole game... (0x34 and 0x02)

0x34 -> generic transfer packet (a wrapper for the real data)
0x02 -> keep alive packet

Inside every 0x34 packet, is a encrypted payload (which I can now decrypt thanks to my finds in the area server...), once decrypted this payload has another 4B header - just like the 0x34 wrapper itself... consisting of PAYLOAD CHECKSUM and REAL PAYLOAD LENGTH!

Each true packet (inside a 0x34 wrapper), includes a 4B footer, which I think might be the real packet code... Im not too sure about that yet.

If someone of you guys has knowledge on reversing MIPS ASM (ps2 client) or x86 ASM (area server on pc), i'd like to request your help to speed this up a bit...

As i'm pretty lousy on MIPS ASM, I want to tell you guys I do need help with that... while I do understand MIPS asm, I'm not the fastest with it... I suppose I will spend the next 2-3 days with finding the encryption algorithm for packets and then write a small library for de/encryption so I can include it in my lobby server.

I think this truly is the most promising attempt to get this thing back online... a bit more help from a few volunteers and we could have a working lobby going sooner than expected. :lol:
emptyazureskies
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by emptyazureskies »

keep up the good work
K3nt0
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by K3nt0 »

Coldbird,

do you believe people do know the meaning of brute force?

To the users: all you have to do to get fragment is to download a small program from Coldbird which you let run in the background that calculates something that helps him to bring you the game. You mail the results to him and that is all. The reason is that it is a lot of calculating and a normal PC would spend days of doing it alone. Also know that he is maybe the only one that truly can resurrect fragment. If you do not support him now maybe you never see someone else as encouraged and skilled like him.

I would assist but I fear my weak netbook is no help at all. But I am looking for people that help. I hope it is ok for you if I give your MSN to them. I will not post it public until you give me your ok for that. But it would be a bit easier if you let me.
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Accela
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Accela »

Hm, I've never seen a server emulated for a console game before, that's sexy. I can help you out with bruteforcing for now. I don't know much about packets, besides spoofing (Right word?) them, and the last time I tried socket programming I threw my keyboard at the wall. ;D
sonicbrit
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by sonicbrit »

Would love to help with the brute forcing.

I downloaded the Area Server and will run it through IDA and see if I get anything useful out of it.

My copy of Fragment is on its way from Japan will be here in a few weeks, for the mean time I'm have a borrowed copy to play with (just need to fix my ps2).

I really hope this project goes somewhere, I'm really excited to help.
K3nt0
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by K3nt0 »

Coldbird, do you still got the power? I got.

Glad to see that people are gathering.

Any people there that are capable of speaking japanese and want to support?
Kaedan
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Kaedan »

Hey, I'm newly registered (been a lurker for awhile though), and recently became interested in trying out Fragment. Of course, even though I'm in Japan, that's not very possible since they brought the servers down.

In any case, I can speak Japanese (but not quite fluently), so I'm willing to help out with any translation that needs to be done.
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Coldbird
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coldbird »

Sorry for the lack of updates but I must admit there havent been any in the last weeks.
School has been starting again and life is as busy as it could get, good thing it's just 2 more weeks till I've got another week off... :)
K3nt0
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by K3nt0 »

Nvm Coldbird. As the best you hold decision right.

Right now I am waiting that other webmasters contact me. They might offer help.

Do you still got the old BBS data of celes network? There was a guy called gorthax. He and his friend wanted to help on fragment. But then you killed your bbs. You might can contact him if you find his mail in your old bbs data. the-only-gorthax@hotmail.com was the addy he posted but something seems weird about his addy. Find out for yourself.

Kaedan you will be a great help in the future. I pm you.
Coma
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coma »

Coldbird wrote:
Mewster wrote:My cpu is at your service!
Someone else to join the bruteforce group? I will start the all-out-attack once I got 10 of them so we can split the load properly.
I don't mind helping. I can dedicate two modern computers to it -- maybe three, with a little luck.
sonicbrit
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by sonicbrit »

Observations so far from looking at the area server.

The data directory contains a bunch of .bin files, most of them are gzip files that are connected together in a single file, each one extracts to a CCSF file, but appears to only contain some of the data, I'm guessing the real data is inside the pack.bin (which I havent been able to find out what format it uses, maybe zlib?)

Coldbird I'd be interested to look at the CCSF library (MAD) that you have, maybe you can make it work with these bin files as well?

Inside the main exe these files listed inside the CCSF files are listed, alot of MDL, ANM, TEX etc..

Also one thing of note is they use MPS (which is MassPlayerSystem, from multiterm), its a platform designed for server and p2p based MMO's, so the reason I'm thinking the lobby code is there because they just compiled in the library (wish I knew how to extract libraries), they made a PC version, PS2 and Gamecube version of MPS, I tried hunting for more data on MPS but havent found anything useful yet.

Finally got the fragment running using ESR, I tried other swap methods and couldnt get it to boot, sadly cant get past the DNAS check yet.
Coma
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coma »

Maybe it would be easier to just reverse engineer the Area Server, once it has basic functions.

Though I personally think fragment isn't worth it... it has the lacking controls of IMOQ (you can't bind keys to skills, items and the like), so it's not really a viable online game (since it doesn't pause while you're frantically scrolling through the menus). That might have something to do with why it was initially unsuccessful in Japan.

So if you think about it, to really revive fragment, you'd have to create a client from scratch - preferably for the PC (so you have more keys to work with), that works around this issue.

Add to that reverse engineering the server - which would allow more players to be on the same server (the Area Server probably wasn't designed to handle too many players at once, especially considering it runs on the player's PC), and you've recreated fragment from scratch...
K3nt0
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by K3nt0 »

I created a japanese translation for the network messages of the PS2 client. With this network debugging should be no problem when creating a server. About 90% of my work should be accurate. The last 10% should be checked by someone with more skills. But my work should be more than enough for now.

Since my skills with ASM/Hex Editing are not so good so far, I can only provide it as a text file. So you would have to look it up manually. But for now that will be acceptable. I think there are other priorities than patching to english right now.

If you need the translation PM me.

@Coma

I doubt that we can improve the area server so much. We also would have to work on the PS2 client in ASM and that is a lot of work. Too much work I think. But maybe in the future...

Notice that you are able to bind skills/items/text messages to keys in fragment. It is really useful.

The only major problem is that fragment got no chat mode, which is horrible. You just get short text messages you can bind. If you know how to chat on the battle mode let me know. If there is truly no solution I got an idea. Maybe I would work on it one day. I am thinking of a sniffer that would insert virtual binds, which can contain text messages as I said. You would have a shell on your pc for chatting or even logging all kinds of data.

I am more a network administrator than a programmer but I can imagine that we will get a lot of options by man-in-the-middle attacks on fragment. Meaning that we could manipulate all kind of data that comes out of our ps2. That way we do not have to ASM hack which I think is harder (since I am no ASM hacker). Also we can work on the data on the fly while it is on our PC. ASM hacking requires massive DVD burning. Also you do not have to find the right offsets (do you call them that way in ASM?), since you always know what data you are sending.

By manipulating our attack target we even might be able to creat PVP, which would be impressive.
Coma
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by Coma »

You can? I saw gameplay videos on YouTube in which the person was doing it the old fashioned way.

Also, when I said create a client from scratch, I meant create a client from scratch, not modify the disassembled client.
K3nt0
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Re: .hack fragment - online mode revival (for real)

Post by K3nt0 »

Yes, it is possible to key bind. I got the game and tried.

If we rewrite the client we also could create a complete new MMORPG. And that was your project already. I personally like both ideas the same.

The original Fragment got this retro feeling, so I like to see it online again. But it is more. For me it is not playing the game that is fascinating me. For me it is its resurrection. Trying to hack it, learning more about computers, meeting other dreamers that think the same way. This my Key of the Twilight. That is why I will see fragment online one day again. Even if I would never play it once. My ID K3nt0 will die once its mission is complete. This shall be the way.
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