Modding an old Win XP-era card game...

[vannac]

If this belongs in a different topic, please let me know. I hope it qualifies as a programming topic though!

 

During the quarantine I've started to play a card game called Cribbage, that I really enjoy playing with my Uncle. We haven't been able to find a good way to play online though because there don't really seem to be any good web-based versions of this game out there. We found one for Android, but my uncle struggles to read his tiny phone screen. 

 

So, I recently picked up one of those "50 Card Games" old-school PC games (you know, the ones with a physical disc) from the Windows XP era. I didn't think it would have online multiplayer support at all, so when I loaded it up and it asked me to make a user account, I was pleasantly surprised! However, my excitement soon died as I realized the game couldn't connect to the game server, which I'm sure has long since been taken offline. I did some digging in the files on the disc and sure enough found a config file listing the following:

 

[Server]
nameServerURL=games1.masque.com
nameServerPort=7001
 

I tried pinging games1 and games2.masque.com, they come back with an IP address but no ping so that confirms that. Games3 didn't have a IP associated with it, and games.masque.com is the URL of the publisher's main web page. I tried editing the config file to direct the server to games.masque.com, but no luck with that. Also, the game gave me a message on the second connection attempt that it would run an update utility to get updates from the server. I tried running this utility directly from the game files installed on my PC, but it gives an error saying there are no updates.

 

I'm wondering if there's some kind of way I can modify this game to think it's connecting to a server that is really on my local machine so I can host games with my uncle (perhaps thru VPN or port-forwarding). What do you guys think? Is this a possibility or a pipe dream? I can't upload all the game files to this post since there's a file limit of 20MB, but I will upload everything that it installed to my PC except a few of the game folders, which I'm sure contains the meat of the card game code.

 

Thanks in advance!

CardGame.zip

[Guest]

I think there are programs you can use to decompile programs into certain languages. 

 

One can also modify assembly code but that could potentially be more complex. 

 

A good game to play tabletop games is tabletop simulator if you just want to play games online. An alternative could be vassal though I don’t know if it does traditional games. 

 

Edit:

you could also sniff the packets being sent. It could give you clues on how the data is organised & you could maybe write your own server. 

 

Some older games also have LAN functionality. You can sniff those packets or use a tunnel software like hamachi. 

 

Finally you could always play a “local” game and screen share with teamspeak or on windows 10 use quick assist. 

[Franck]

best bet is to decompile the code but that's not a certainty. Know that a server is not as easy as simply pointing to another IP. Very often the server has a special application they made running and you have to get your hand on it if you want to create an unofficial server. If you do decompile the code you might figure out what the server logic look like and you may be able to make your own server application and host it locally and then connect to it.