A bountiful list of VA’s projects/endeavors
Over the years, VA (Virtual Adepts) dug very deep into their favorite games and had numerous projects pertaining to them. A handful of these projects were fueled by their research and development efforts.
NOTICE: All information on this page has been officially declassified by the VAS Network.
Tools of the Trade
VA primarily used Cheat Engine (to find what does what, and where things are in the game), HxD (same reason as Cheat Engine, but more R&D focused research), OllyDBG (their real-time testing platform, e.g. testing a new patch or applying executable changes) and Lame Patcher (for applying the final product from their research and development efforts). These four tools were the backbone of the Research & Development team.
Their projects were largely successful on numerous games that had no available form of source code publicly available. This was largely thanks to their modus operandi for undertaking R&D projects; their MO focused only on reverse engineering pieces of code, rather than having to rely on—or even outright search for—the source code itself.
Project ATLAS
Eventually, after gathering enough data from the tools, VA compiled and documented everything into a large database system that they called “ATLAS”. They also created ATLAS to automatically log, parse, and store data in numerous mini databases that were related to their areas of interest. This side of ATLAS is considered to be a form of AI, or Artificial Intelligence.
ATLAS’ creation and existence was only known by the select few members in VA. Depending on the ranking of that member, he or she could search and/or view the information. VA implemented this approach to data handling for ATLAS—simply because of the sheer amount of information contained in ATLAS. The consequences of it falling into the wrong hands would be too significant and detrimental to VA, and all games that they were involved with. Fortunately, ATLAS was never breached, and so it never fell into the wrong hands.
After the Fall (Note: The Fall refers to the era that had no online play for Star Wars: Battlefront 2; essentially destroying the game’s population), Draigun (the leader of VA during the Fall of SWBF2 era) moved most of the information from ATLAS to a private cloud server. His intentions were to preserve the information, while at the same time, saving it from a potential future breach and/or leak. (Note: The ATLAS project was maintained by an approximately 100 percent efficient life support and electrical system; the costs to keep it running were virtually zero).
One of the fundamental attributes that ATLAS possessed, was the ability to defend itself against inside/outside intrusions and attacks. The system was fully aware and monitoring all open connections to and from itself. Additionally, each file was encrypted with 192-bit AES-GCM. Each key was uniquely generated per new file, so even if you were to breach ATLAS, it would be nearly impossible (unless if a Quantum computer was to be used) to leak all data.
Finally, the system had an irreversible, ironclad rule: all data cannot be deleted and/or modified, even if passing through an entirely different system (e.g. moving the data to a flash drive). However, deletion of the data is still possible in an isolated environment, as no communication could be established between the file and ATLAS. If it wasn’t clear, this means each file had the capability to contact ATLAS, even if it’s in another storage system entirely. Any modifications to the data would result in it being overridden after the save takes place—which takes the previous backup from ATLAS itself.
Master Server Replication — Project FreeGST
Around late 2012, one of VA’s leaders initiated a project that would eventually replace the GameSpy Master Server service—a service hosted on the GameSpy infrastructure that is the backbone of online access for any game that uses GameSpy.
VA came to the conclusion that in order for Star Wars: Battlefront II (SWBF2) to survive in the long-run, they had to create a new master server that replaces and replicates what the GameSpy master server originally did. This project was started because of the rising possibility that online SWBF2 would eventually go offline. For most of 2013, VA didn’t make much progress on this project, simply due to the fact that there wasn’t any hard indication that the game would shut down anytime soon. It wasn’t until early 2014 that VA began heavy development and work on Project FreeGST.
Eyes Only, the first leader of VA, announced the official beta release of the project, dubbed FreeGST, on June 3rd, 201—via the Star Wars Gaming Order (SWGO) official forums. This release was in an obvious response to the announced June 31st shutdown date as GameSpy originally said. EA, the owner of the game at the time, made an announcement regarding this news.
Unfortunately, about a year after the beta release of FreeGST (well into the death of Star Wars: Battlefront 2), VA had discontinued further development, due to lack of overall community and fan interest. Not only that, but numerous projects released by the various communities of SWBF2—which sought to save the game—ironically divided the community instead.
The project name itself, “FreeGST”, stood for “Free GameSpy Technology”.
The SWBF2 “Anti-Cheat Movement” Era (2011-2014)
As ironic as it may sound, VA was as a matter of fact, involved in the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 Anti-Cheat Movement (SWBF2-ACM). This group, or what they referred to themselves as a coalition, officially formed sometime in 2011. The primary focus of the group was to detect, deter, and prevent hack attempts and attacks against the popular community servers. This movement was launched from the sudden, rising use of many in-game exploits—some of which were much too lethal to go unrecognized. SWBF2-ACM’s main headquarters was through the use of the now extinct Xfire gaming platform.
SWGO and the Global Warfighter League were mostly responsible for spearheading the movement; however, it was due to the excellent work of a VA member that made the SWBF2-ACM so effective. {VA}Bryant—known by few, respected by many—was a high-ranking VA member that had an extensive software engineering and computer science background.
SWGO reached out to him at the time when VA was SWGO’s neutral ally; in essence, under SWGO, he created server (game server, or the host) and client (the player, and his or her game files) patches (Note: a patch is to fix a defect or bug within the game). These patches protected and hardened servers/clients, while at the same time, prevented bad actors from launching hack attacks. A lot of these malicious attacks, when executed, disrupted the online gaming community; they rendered most of the servers unplayable.
VA’s own prestigious R&D team—led by both Eyes Only and Draigun—would eventually release public patches to fix various long-standing issues, bugs and to patch critical security holes. Some of these fixes were distributed to participating members of the SWBF2-ACM. SWGO was the primary recipient of the various projects and ideas that VA’s R&D team accomplished.
VA, while not having the same opinion as SWBF2-ACM members, still helped the project to succeed. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 would have suffered in the long run, and no one wanted it to become a wasteland—not even VA.
Page revised on 02/20/18
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