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From: "Mike Knowles" <mknowles@ilovescience.com>
Subject: Playing M:TG Interactive Encyc. online w/o Wizard's server
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Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 15:58:58 GMT
Xref: utk.edu rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc:346

Here is a quick synopsis of how we were able to get the information we
needed in order to do this.

Unfortunately, the computer I'm at (work) doesn't have the files as-such, so
I'm forced to resort to a how-to-find-out-yourself method.  If you need more
details, I can get the rest of the information at home and post from there.

Anyway, after looking at the MagicOP.exe file, it looked like it just took a
file in (it does) and used that for configuring the online play (it does
this too).  Well then, we reasoned, could someone fake the file?

To check, we renamed the magicop.exe file in the online directory.  Then we
copied notepad.exe to the same directory and renamed it magicop.exe .
(There are lots of good ways of doing this, this is one of the easier, but
definately not the only way).

Then we tried to create a game.  In notepad (since we swapped files) a text
file appeared, in plain text, on the type of file needed in order to create
a game.

Then, we tried to join some games.  Same result, with only a slightly
different file.

Using the files we made as a template, it was very easy to deduce what to
build for a game.

Then, just remove the notepad.exe (that was renamed) and put back the
magicop.exe file.  Create the template files, and double click on the file
(make sure that the file is still named *.wg2) and you're on your way.

We've yet to test this while in an intranet (or playing off the internet at
all) but it does work outside of wizards.com this way.

Taking this information, it would be somewhat trivial to set up a web site
that worked similar to mtgonline.wizards.com but contained a login screen
with a password, chat screens, etc.  I have space, but no time to write and
incorporate those things, so simply wrote a small Win32 app that gives me a
small dialog to configure an online game (and gave a similar thing to the
people I play with)

Hope that helps!  If someone wants the code, I may be willing to part with
it if I feel like any tool made from it would benefit the community here as
a whole.  (Something I'm trying to polish the app up for as well)

Mike Knowles

(GraceHopper or some variant on mtgonline.wizards.com)

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(7V9@GP_ is the (database) password.
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