uMod

Hi GW Modders,

I want to introduce you to Universal Modding Engine (uMod). It is an open source clone of TexMod and a how-to can be found here.

What uMod V1.0 (beta) can:

• support the TexMod *.tpf Mods
• starting GW through uMod (like TexMod) but with command line options
• starting GW extern (e.g. double click on the GW.exe directly in the explorer, this method does somehow not work for GW under Win XP)
• activate and deactivate mods while GW is running
• you can save your mod settings into templates, one template can be set as default and is loaded when gw starts
• you can mod more than one game simultaneously (e.g. GW Multi-Launch)

Benefits for mod users:

• start GW with your favourite mods with 2 double clicks (start uMod, afterwards start GW)
• atm it is not detected by any anti-virus program -> there is no need for a white list entry
• error messages
• no flickering of textures
• no *.tmp files in your temporary directory
• uMod loads the mods faster

Benefits for mod creators:

• save all the textures which are loaded by GW (you can also select and save single textures)
• reload textures while you are editing them to see how your changes take effect in GW (you can also add the *.dds file directly)

The development group is very small and we are looking for new members. Features we want to introduce in the next versions:

• support of DirectX 8, 10, and 11 (DirectX 10 hopefully before the release of GW 2)
• OnScreenDisplay (configure uMod without minimizing the game)

Keep in mind: Like TexMod also uMod is not supported in any way from ArenaNet. Before I start explaining with my German-English you better read the TexMod article on wiki.guildwars.com.

Best ROTA

Sorry, but this sounds a bit fishy...
this is your first post..account made today probably..

If its legit, im amazed, but since theres no real proof that it is, im going to wait a bit for other more experienced people to find out.

Me not touch with 10 foot pole.

Have you guys even looked at the source code? Anyone can read it, anyone can change it, anyone can compile it themselves.

If you haven't read the source code, which is publicly available, then you have no reason to distrust this person.
Off I go to read the code. Good bye.

Hmm, I doubt that this is a virus, as it is open source. When I get home I will definitely try this out, and come back with a report on how it went.


There is one part that worries me however. I looked into the program, and I believe they are using dll-injection to allow interfacing with the game, which means being able to change .tpf's when the game is already running. This is game alteration, which I believe to be against the EULA.

However, other than that detail, this is an amazing project with a lot of potential, and I will definitely keep an eye on the project.

EDIT: Tried it out, no virus, works very well, however, it can be confusing how it works at first.

This. I don't have time to read the source now, but the mere fact that it's being given to me strongly implies there's nothing fishy in it.

Yes I created the account yesterday and yes this is my first post.

The question is not if it is legal but if it is compliant to the EULA of GW. But I posted also a link to wiki.guildwars.com. There you can find some information about how ArenaNet think about modding. But I must admit, this are general statements not explicit to uMod.

Yes the code uses dll-injection. I'm sure TexMod also does. One need to inject code into the game, otherwise one can't change the textures that way TexMod and uMod does. So dll injection is the easiest way and not less legal than other ways.

BTW: As TexMod also uMod can start GW. By that, the injected dll is written into the loading sequence of the started game. This part is the sole exception, which can't be downloaded in similar way from official Microsoft Websites (well except the GUI programming with wxWidgets, but this should obviously not be illegal).
But this also means, if you use the injection method with the hook, you really use only code which is supported by Microsoft in similar way. But I'm no lawyer, thus I don't know if uMod is legal or not.

Modifying of Guild Wars is in breach of the EULA period, end of story, always.

Any mod breaches the EULA as it clearly states that buying a key does not grant you the right of Modification. And legally the software's address space is part of the software.

But breaching the EULA is not the end of the world, becuase the EULA also clearly states that NC Interactive merely "reserves the right" to terminate anyone in violation of the EULA.

So heck yes this breaches the EULA but that don't matter, just stick to graphical modifications and you wont get banned.

However if you do choose to use TexMod or uMod or whatever, and you do get banned you have no recourse as you did Violate the EULA. You just wont get banned for making textual modification to the game through this method.

I'm with this guy. DLL-injection worries me tho. As we all know, even if it's only just graphical shit, Anet might not like it. In my opinion same rules goes for this as goes for Texmod. Time shows how popular this gets. It's up to you if you wanna use it or not.

Hmmmm...
Person who just made Guru account? check
Same person making claims that random program is great? check
Person says it may not be legal, but heck, give it a go? check
Person then states "But I'm no lawyer, thus I don't know if uMod is legal or not" check and check!
Call me crazy but this is a formula for some bannage. As to the ones who give this a whirl, guess you'll be testing how well those character roll backs work out...
On a side note if you read all of that this" Keep in mind that occasionally people get creative and might bring up the use of a harmless program to attempt to mask other harmful activities. We see that with other situations, such as where they say "But I was only using an alternative OS, why was I blocked?" and we discover they are using major bot programs." should shine a bit of light on the questionable nature of this fellas character. First time post and its a miracle? Maybe, but my account is worth far more to me then riding this train....

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Have fun with that! LOL, we have EVERY REASON to distrust this person... But be my guest, try it out!

ROTA is a german fellow and is active on the german Wartower forum since 2007. If you look at his user profile over there and check his posts, you will only find serious and reasonable posts. There is nothing suspicious about him, nothing at all. He simply didn't choose to register at guru until now.

If uMod will be tolerated or banned by Arenanet is yet to be seen. I hope, that uMod does nothing else to the game than Texmod and Arenanet will tolerate it. I hope that ROTA didn't implement any feature that could be abused as a real advantage against other players, since then it is reasonable to assume that Arenanet will tolerate it.

No texture flicking or false replacement of textures like in Texmod would be a huge improvement over Texmod! That is in fact the only reason I don't use Texmod on a regular basis but only for the cartographer title.

No offence, but I'll lean towards the side of caution. I do hope it does all that is stated, it would be vast improvement over Texmod, but until we hear some official word from Anet, I'd say its best left alone. I find it best to get the "this won't get you banned for using it" nod from someone who has the say so. ROTA, I hope this is legit, but don't expect the roars of the masses for this program until we have a bit of confirmation as to their official stance on it.

First off, thank you for the program! I've been trying it out for the past few hours and it's worked flawlessly so far. The extra features are extremely handy and superior compared to Texmod.

Second, I never understand why when people develop things such as these, people are extremely quick to be overcautious. Being on the edge of caution is understandable, but talking about banning people is insane. The entire project is open source, so trying to hide some sort of malware is the same as trying to hide an elephant in a bedroom. Absolutely dumb.

And if you are worried about the go ahead from Anet? On the wiki page for Texmod, there are quotes from Anet staff there and it's been said over and over again. This sentence summarises it well from Gaile Grey.

"What I want to say above all about this matter is that if you're going to mod, have fun, but do stick with the benign and positive uses of the programs and create mods that impact the game only in ways that are fun and harmless." http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...phics#ArenaNet

This mod is exactly that, and I recommend to anyone interested to try it. I am 100% sure your computer nor GW account will blow up.

dll-injection is how anet detected the 3700+ botting accounts last year and banned them all. IMO if you use this thing anet will view it as botting and ban you.

The prior textmod incarnation did not use dll-injection and yes anet has said that textmod was fine. This is completely different, I would not even try it, just stick with the original.

Any proof?

Why was nobody banned because of TexMod? They can detect if somebody uses TexMod. They also can detect detours which TexMod definitely use.

I am sure ArenaNet detect bot-users by analysing the user interaction.

If you will be banned because of dll injection, would mean that you will be banned while using global hot keys with programs like TeamSpeak.
Fraps also uses dll injection to detour DirectX functions. Was somebody banned because he used Fraps?

dll injection is a legal method supported by windows. This is only one example page of a whole range of official Microsoft webpages about dll injection

I lost my original account to botting, using the same dll-injection method used by the other 3700+ accounts. I could go into details but the mods on guru would censor it as it has a lot to do with...well...botting.

Text mod only modified the display properties on your end by uploading changes to your own computer. If this thing did the same I would say go for it, however this new thing goes one step further and uses....ta-da...dll-injection. Making it significantly different than textmod...as my prior post clearly states. And I don't think anet can detect the regular textmod.

Do you really think anet individually "analyzed" 3700+ accounts? No, they did a mass "assumption", if there was a dll injection, you got banned. Once tickets were filled then the accounts were individually reviewed but even at that most harmless dll's were still held as banned.

Fraps, TS and what ever else you think uses dll-injection do not use dll's in the way this thing or botting did. I'm not sure why you would even bring that up...

dll injection being "legal" with windows has absolutely nothing to do with whether anet considers it legal. I don't understand why you would think it would... That's like saying a car is made to go 120 mph but the speed limit is 70 mph so that means it's OK for you to go 120 mph without getting a ticket...

TexMod CANNOT be detected by guild wars with its current setup. Texmod is not Server Side its Client Side. This means it has 0 interaction with the server or mechanics of the game. Its simple what YOU see is what YOU get. No one else can see these alterations. This UMod is a D3D Overlay, Some of you are very familiar with these types of things, you just dont know it. If you use Steam/Origin/Xfire you will see what Overlay is when the windows pop up in game.

The only way guild wars could detect a dll injection is if it had some sort of anti software like punkbuster/shield guardian, but then again you can always bypass those.

I still have not used this or checked its code yet im just telling you mechanics behind it. I will check this out later when i have more free time.

But on a lighter note, If you were going to get banned for this you would be banned for anything that supports ingame overlay, and i use a multitude of these programs with direct draw overlay.

You have just proved how computer illiterate you are. ALL of the "mechanics of the game" are client side, that is how bots work. They pick up data on the game environment from your computer's memory or hard disk and then make decisions based on that information. They may well use DLL injection to do that... but DLL injection is not what makes them bad, what makes them bad is the fact that they use the information obtained to do things that allow the game to be played without human interaction.

DLL injection alone doesn't prove anything. Countless programs use it. It is a safe bet that, Fraps, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak and yes TexMod all use DLL injection in some form or another.

DLL injection is a means to an end, and it is that end that decides weather or not what you are doing is "benign and harmless" or gets you a ban.

once again dll injection has nothing to do with what type of code you inject. You got banned cause you have injected a bot.

do you really knew, that TexMod does not use dll injection?? Did you see the code?
But no matter how TexMod inject the code, but it does inject code. So lets call it code injection!! And TexMod does not upload changes on the computer. What should this be? It simply does redirect the fake texture instead of the original texture to the device->SetTexture function. How does TexMod do this? YES Code injection and Detour. Dll injection is only the easiest way of code injection. So don't tell me, that TexMod does something else than code injection and detouring.

ArenaNet has a very new thing, its called "Computer". These new things are extremely fast in detecting automatic behaviour. They could do a fft or calculate autocorrelations of the time interval the last keystrokes. Measure the aiming ability of the mouse of object (e.g. a bot always hit the skill in the middle of the icon). Well there are many more possibilities, which can be done for a mass of players.

Fraps uses dll injection as uMod does. Fraps detour DirectX functions, as uMod does. Fraps read out the data from DirectX objects, as uMod does. But uMod also redirect the fake texture instead of the original texture to the SetTexture function, as TexMod does.

What do you mean by that? Not using a dll in the same way?? You load a dll and call a function out of the dll. How can I use a dll in a different way, then loading functions on runtime? What you probably mean, that different dll contain different functions, but this has nothing to do, how to use a dll or how to inject a dll!

I have never written something else. I always give the warning to take care about the EULA of the games!

But compared to you, I am not telling that dll injection is 1337 h4xX0rZ rul0r shit, and each program using it is an illegal bot and you will get banned for it.

I pointed out, that dll injection is a normal method, supported by windows and used from many programs. If the program is legal or not, if it is against EULA's or not, depends on what you inject! And if ArenaNet would ban players because they have detected an injected dll, than probably most GW players would have been banned.

Your about as clueless as a box of rocks. These programs have nothing to do with the mechanics and neither do bots. The closest these programs get is reading packet flow and issuing clicks on x/y axis. If they were tied into mechanics i would be flying a dragon mount from a self made mod. You need to learn more about these types of things before spewing out some google response

Also, the reason people had been busted was due to calculations made by a computer.

Example: you clicked 10,000 times and all the clicks were .8 seconds apart. this would be detected by guild wars. Or you opening 40 stacks of something within a certian time frame, But they dont even care about these things anymore. I know so many people breaking these rules

While this will probably be a pointless post because you obviously think you know it all but... here goes.

Everything that you see about a given map Visually, either already exists on your computer or is downloaded when you enter a zone. So when your inside a zone all of the info in terms of where things are. Is stored locally or on your computer. The information coming and going to the server is information related to your actions and the actions of others.

The servers on Anet's side track where you are, what your doing and how much damage you are doing. They keep track of the health of all players and NPCs and instruct players and NPCs to die when their health reaches zero. They then decide what loot is dropped and send a trigger to drop that loot.

In general the so called "game logic" type of server takes care of all the math involved in "game mechanics" but the status and position of everything in a given zone is stored either in memory or in files on your PC.

A proper bot, not a macro that merely repeats input actions over and over, reads this information on where things are and what their status is and then generates an action based on those conditions.

DLL Injection would be a method by which Program A can run inside of Program B address space, giving Program A access to memory addresses currently allocated to Program B.

If Program A is a bot it would use this access to figure out the status of NPCs or players inside a zone and generate an action based on that. This is not allowed.

However if Program A for example is uMod it would use this access to replace a certain texture visually changing the way the game appears on your screen. This is allowed.

A good example of this would be Mod from Argos-Soft that displays the amount of foes killed and the total amount in the zone. This Injects code that reads memory finds both numbers and displays them.

Code injection to gain information or visually change the game is in general permitted. Code injection to take information and generate user input is a no no. And anything that directly interacts with Anets server's such as the chat client we saw a while back is also a big no no. But other then that mods related to displaying information and changing the graphical experience have for the most part been permitted.

lol you just proved my point for me. As i said prior these types of things do nothing server side, im not sure what point your trying to get across when your saying im wrong. If you think all this is tied into "Mechanics" lets see you change a game mechanic then.

I usually use texmod, like many people. This umod seems awesome but... I'm not a programmer; I'm only a user, like many people.
I'm confused about all that have been said here. I don't want to be banned after 6+ years.
If someone from ANet could opine about this umod will be really great: if it's like texmod (allowed but not supported) or not allowed at all. Thanks all.

@drok3n and @DarkKnight: I think, you are both standing on the same side

@Styxgyan: I asked two community managers, I was once promised but never got an answer. I know also from others asking some community managers, but without any response too (to my knowledge). I hope that more players will ask to show ArenaNet that there is an interest in the community.

The last think I want, is other players loosing their accounts, because of using uMod. My account is also 6+ years old, I can understand your situation.

Thats why i was wondering why he was arguing lol

if you guys want more info google d3d

Bit of a late reply i know - the only way i see of clearing this up would be the op to contact anet support , give them full details of the program and offer to give them the source code etc and see what they say on regards of it being legal or not.
Sadly i dont see anet having the time or man power to check.
In the last 6 years of gw with all the bots etc that have been around as well as hacking accounts , it has made the community more self aware and made us more untrusting.
Its nothing personal but understandable and untill official word by anet we all will remain paranoid.

On a slight diff note but an example - many ppl may remember msnchat years ago and scripts (bots) - many a person got cought out when people designed the scripts with backdoors left open - they could remotely take control of the script (bot) and cause damage.Us paranoid people are only protecting ourselves like we did back then - if it looks/sounds dodgy = we wont touch it with a 10ft barge pole.

frankly i would trust umod over and above texmod since ROTA has said this is open source (meaning you can download the source code) where texmod is not and could be laced with a virus. unless you are getting umod from another source (already compiled) i would trust ROTA and his bunch over something that has been floating around mediafire since 2006.

if you read the wiki on this anet has never blessed texmod only said they don't support it. show me where an anet officer has given their blessing on this or anything else 3rd party.

This is much better than Textmod because I don't get any of those annoying black squares . I just hope that Anet lets people use it.

great thing to use however having massive issues with it working with Guild Wars Multi Launcher. Any explanation? im not even trying to open GWML through uMod but for some reason if i try to open GWML itll open the program but not the extra GW im trying to open.

It works for me, I have it setup so that I open umod first, then whenever i run gw.exe umod attaches to it. So if i have just umod open, then i start multilaunch and launch gw from multilaunch then it works.

mine doesnt. i'll have gw open already and when i open GWML, ML opens but if i press Start on the copy i wanna run it doesnt run it, instead my GWML freezes completely and its not just me thats having the issue, a couple of friends are too.

yes that happens to me too. Start GWML first without any gw open. I think the problem is that GWML cannot patch an already open copy of gw if it has umod injected.

nah still wont do it for some reason.. it might be my version or something but if i open GWML 1st and try opening my normal game using uMod the thing still freezes and wont let me do anything

This is great, I won't go back to Texmod unless Anet threatens to take our accounts for using it.

Thats not going to happen.

uMod can inject GW using a hook. You have to start uMod, activate hook through the menu and you need to add GW once to the list. Each time GW is started (no matter how it is started) GW is also injected by uMod. But this don't work under WinXP.

If GW freezes it would be nice if you could send me the log file (for that you need to download the version with logging mode enabled or compile it again with LOG_MESSAGE=1)

The solution for multiples of the same GW client used by GWML isn't the best out there. It usually does end up with the game crashing. It just removes the file handle instead of changing the file handles share settings.

Just wanted to say Thanks for this.

I had been using TexMod, but was really irritated by textures loading incorrectly and not going away no matter how much I attempted to force a texture reload. Also, I like not having to rechoose and reorder all my mods each time I start GW is quite a perk.

I'd like to echo the thanks for making this. Command line support and eliminating graphics glitches is wonderful.

I do have one minor issue, though. For some reason, my mod will briefly flash the original texture before it gets replaced, and this happens every time the character screen loads. It doesn't bother me, but I thought you might like to know about any issues.

Thank you for the information. I need always the log file. For that you can either compile uMod for your own with logging mode enabled or download a version with enabled logging mode. But as you said it is a minor problem. I already have one big problem left to solve. Fortunately it does not affect Guild Wars

But I want to aim forward to DirectX10 (GW2) thus I won't solve minor bugs. I hope I have more time in the next months to start again developing.

So if somebody want to join the project, feel free to contact me