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Introduction
The cat-and-mouse-game between our friends at the Jagex Game Studio and RuneScape botting clients is an age old tale. Today I am happy to announce our initiative aimed to secure a comfortable lead in the arms race for the foreseeable future: RuneMate Spectre.
The intention of this project is to architect and implement a new process flow for how the bot client will access and play our favorite game with a focus in making it indistinguishable from a legitimate player for years to come. This will be a drastic divergence from the stale patterns that all botting clients currently employ, leading to a more long-term solution and a steep barrier to detection. We will be leveraging cutting edge technologies that have previously never been utilized in this scene with the expectation of creating the new standard for the next generation of botting.
While this is primarily an internal change to permanently thwart client detection attempts, it has widespread implications that will also give us the opportunity to provide you with awesome new features, free of charge.
Phases
Phase A: Aimed to provide a stable implementation of the new process flow with completed internal changes. Release will have a similar user experience and feature set to what currently exists.
Phase B: Will leverage the new process flow to provide features previously not possible, both at a user and developer level. Includes a redesigned user interface.
Phase C: Further feature releases with a focus on remote access and bot management.
Note: Phase A will be a bulk update due to its internal nature, while Phases B & C will follow the typical release cycle of incremental updates.
Dev Updates
Phase A Dev Update
As promised, here is the development update on RuneMate 2.0 Spectre. We began from scratch with a new code base and code repository, making sure that we can take this opportunity to review and optimize every part of the application. So far the core of the project is in late stages of development. There are several more tasks that need to be done before the objectives of Spectre will have been met, but we're well on our way.
Unfortunately due to how drastic of a paradigm shift Spectre is, a large portion of the API's internals are going to need to be rewritten which may introduce some delays although I'm not going to jump the gun and say that we need more time just yet. In addition to that, the current structure of the API may not be optimal performance wise so we're considering introducing an optional new API that would better utilize the core (post-release).
One of the new features that will be made possible by Spectre is "tabbed botting", although not quite in the way you may be used to. Multiple bots can be controlled from the same management interface, separated by tabs. This should make it easier for our power users to control larger amount of bots at once. The reason "tabbed botting" is in quotes is because only the bots will be running in the tabs. The game itself will be running in separate, isolated Java virtual machines (JVMs). This method is analogous of how Google Chrome has a separate process for each browser tab allowing for blazing fast speeds.
Before anyone jumps to a conclusion about what Spectre really is, it is not a Java agent attached at startup like some of our competitors use. From our extensive evaluation of options we have found that detecting that method is far too easy for our taste. We're still using a form of reflection as we always have, although with our new approach we do have more flexibility than we did in the past.
tl;dr Spectre development is coming along well and although we had a few unexpected hurdles we think we're on schedule for a release at the end of the countdown. There are a couple time intensive tasks in regards to upgrading the API that could potentially delay it, but it's too soon for us to guess. Multiple bots can be ran on one JVM per bot manager and be able to be controlled through a tabbed interface while each instance of the game will run in its own JVM.
Final exams hit @Cloud and me harder than expected. We haven't been able to put in the hours we wanted to this week due to them and thus have to delay Spectre Phase A by a week. That being said, it'll give us the chance to pack more into the initial release without having to rush it so there's a silver lining. I hope you all are as excited about this as I am. Can't wait to show you guys what we've been working on.
Here's the situation folks. @Cloud and I set an insanely ambitious deadline on purpose so that we work crazy hard towards it. But as we usually do, we scope creeped, or increased the number of things we wanted to do. We basically combined Phase A and Phase B tasks into one since it turned out it was just easier to do simultaneously. But there are only so many all-nighters one can pull in a row before the blurred vision kicks in, so it's time to take a step back and rest. I am extending the ETA by a few days in which we can both get some shut-eye and wrap up the last few loose ends. I will try to collect some statistics that explain the magnitude of this overhaul as well as get some teaser screenshots. In the meantime, happy holidays and happy botting!
@Cloud and I have to come clean about something: we intentionally set an impossible ETA, one we never could even dream of meeting. Why you may ask? Like many of you, we perform at our best when we're under extreme amounts of pressure. It's what allows us to be full-time students, full-time programmers/engineers, full-time business owners, and full-time RuneMates all at the same time. A few short weeks ago we set out to overhaul the 62,746 line application we all love and know as RuneMate 1.0 in order to pioneer the unexplored future of botting. The changes affected every facet of the application from how we access the RuneScape client to the design of the user interface. We initially had a multi-phase timeline, as posted in the original post, but the paradigm shift affected too many things and as such we had to combine Phase A and B to avoid redundant work. As such, we had to postpone the ETA to reflect the increased scope. However, in our haste and optimism we did not give ourselves enough of an extension to deal with the added objectives and that is where we are now. To prevent making that mistake again, we have withdrawn the ETA in order to properly assess how long it will take us to wrap up Spectre as well as spend some time with our families this holiday season. With three consecutive all-nighters working on this with @Cloud, we have been neglecting both our health and our loved ones. Spectre was well-engineered. Spectre is an inevitability. Spectre will be the new gold standard. It just won't be today, and that's okay.
A little teaser as promised. More to come soon.
What's Spotify guys?
Spectre video:
Since people have been complaining about the lack of any 'proof' that Spectre is as close to release as we say it is, here's a quick video to showcase it:
RuneMate Spectre is officially in closed beta with all Bot Authors getting automatic access to it. They are hard at work patching up your favorites bots so there is no downtime when Spectre is publicly released.
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