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[Dev Gen.] Where To Start In Emulator Design & Development [Dev Gen.]

Newbie Spellweaver
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Helllo everyone!

I have been doing some digging in an attempt to better understand the functions of Habbo emulators, what main components they consist of, and how to start forming ideas for working on my own project. Unfortunately, in my quest I have not found a whole lot out there; with the only real insight into functionality and design of an emulator being packet structures. Now, even the information I find about this is ~3+ years old and I'm starting to get a bit intimidated.

It's starting to seem like in order to get my feet in the door I have to pick a good project to reference and just start reworking it in my own code, with my own conventions, and my own implementations. I would really rather understand a concept or a project before I start chipping away at it, as I've never been fond of programming this way and often feel like it's just rewording someone else's work.

It's weird that there is so much hate in the retro scene these days about people not coming up with their own content, yet the amount of easily accessible resources that could teach new comers some emulator/Habbo protocol basics is very limited. As someone who has a background in programming and technology, it does not seem like an easy task, I'm sure it seems very daunting to someone just trying to figure out coding too.

Anyways, I would really appreciate if you all would share what resources or knowledge you have that could help me further down the road of eventually being able to contribute my own rich content to this community!

I really want to have a fair understanding of all the components that go into making an emulator, where one even begins in terms of layout & design, what theory, libraries, etc are involved in the process.

I've got a few years of experience programming with a few different languages and techs. Most of my work has been scripts, automation, and various UI that helps me in my work. This would end up being the largest project to scale that I have worked on and so I am comfortable with taking my time to study and really get this right. I have like ~1.5 years of University left and I'd love to leave with a semi-major project under my belt in something that is totally relevant to my interests and passions.

TL;DR: It's hard to find sources for how an Emulator actually works and what parts it's made of. I'd love to know so I can work towards making my own contributions rather than riding on other peoples. Share some resources, info, advice, examples, etc.

Help, pl0x? Thanks :8::laugh:
 
Initiate Mage
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I agree with that. I also wanna learn stuff about emulators, i hope people will share stuff on this treath to keep us devs going!
 
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Newbie Spellweaver
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I agree with that. I also wanna learn stuff about emulators, i hope people will share stuff on this treath to keep us devs going!

Yeah, if someone can even confirm what the right packet structures are, like headers etc that would be helpful.

I think that someone will point the people like us, who see this, in the right direction!
 
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Newbie Spellweaver
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Ooo thank you, I've only ever seen that middle one. Okay so really it seems like your method of using the packet structures to decode is a better practice, compared to relying on a packet sniffer.

So essentially you want to decode all the packet structures in the Habbo.swf that's being used in the project and then you can start working on turning those into Systems for the server to use?
 
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Newbie Spellweaver
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Okay that makes sense. I'm starting to get an idea of how you get a starting point now. So a good place to start maybe would be first figuring out how to setup the connection between client & server and initialize an instance for a user which would bring them to hotel view with like a basic UI? Then maybe as you said figuring out packets relating to loading a room or something.

I don't mean to seem like I'm asking you what to do first, it's just my first time trying to take on a large scale project and so it's proving kinda difficult to get my thoughts organized enough to come up with a starting point. I think I might start working out a semi-serious design layout soon, after I do some more studying on packets and your described method of decoding. I appreciate your help a lot, there's really only a handful of users to get feedback from and you are definitely one of them.
 
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