JJBlaha

I want to make a program that can take data from a game, write to and from databases, and interact with the game. Must be in windows. What language should I write this in, and why? What will I need to know? I know PHP.

Arevos

What game? Taking data and interacting with a game may be difficult, depending on what that game is.

JJBlaha

The game is magic the gathering online. The game can be downloaded at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x.../downloadlinks for free.

Arevos

I'd say that it would be pretty difficult to create a program that could interact with that game autonomously.

JJBlaha

At least 3 seperate people have. I write a bot using a macro program called AC Tools that used screen captures and mouse movements and clicks to do it, but I want something more advanced. I know it can be done, I am just not sure how.

Indigno

If you're looking to grab the data on the way to the server and the client, you'll need something that can wirk with sockets. If you want to just pull it out of the client, then I can't rightly say that I know.

__________________
Perhaps I should have a sticky topic for all of the times I "return" to this forum instead of a new one every time.

Arevos

The main problem is getting information from the game in a format that can be parsed by a program. You essentially have two approaches; try to capture the information as it appears to the user, or try to get the information required by looking at the program's internal state (or, alternatively, its network traffic).

Neither approach seems easy. Magic the Gathering Online appears to use a custom GUI system (not uncommon in computer games), and from the screenshots I've seen it looks as if you can't select the text on a card image. Thus, in order to get the information from the game you'd have to use optical character recognition (OCR) and some complex graphical routines to discern the game's state from the images on screen. Trying to infer the same information from internal program state or network traffic seems even more difficult.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, but it may be far more difficult than you've anticipated.

Indigno

What exactly are you intentions with this program? What will it do?

__________________
Perhaps I should have a sticky topic for all of the times I "return" to this forum instead of a new one every time.

JJBlaha

I know how to get what cards they own into a .csv database. What i need it to do is know when windows pop up (they always pop up in the same place) or when certain images change (always the same images in the same place) right now I think i can do it with a macro program like AC Tools or AutoIT in combination with something to deal with, and write to and from databases. What i do not know how to do is determine what cards they have picked in a trade, but maybe intercepting the packets with something similiar to a packet sniffer would work?

So my revised question is what language is best for dealing with databases, packet sniffing, and such?