Update 2, Unexpected Problems Arose
Hello, it is I, chief of operations on the project, mc-intosh... I'd like to start off this update post by telling you guys that everyone I've spoken to and everyone who's tried helping me on this, including myself, wants to, quote, "off themselves" after multiple (unsuccessful) attempts of trying to get this game to work. I'm working on this basically alone, apart from @domincja (who is constantly making sure I don't off myself because of this game) so it might take a while until we get the game past the intro sequence, into the main menu. I've already spent hours on reverse engineering how the Tencent Protect anticheat works and I believe I'm, slowly but surely, making progress on fully understanding it.
Why is modding this game so difficult?
Well, you see, Unreal Engine 4 has tons of tools available online made by the community to quickly find information required for setting up a mod project ("Offsets" of "GNames", "GObjects", etc. for those looking for technical details) which should ideally make the process streamlined and easy!! ...But unfortunately, none of them work on Transformers Online. Tencent has made some, in my opinion, very stupid choices when making this game, in turn making my job much harder than it needs to be.
First of all, they use their own, proprietary version of Unreal Engine 4.14.3, which features several inconvenient changes, such as offsetting some values in the game's files seemingly in order to prevent people from accessing the 3D models, textures, maps, etc. and encryption/protection of the game's main executable file in a way that obscures locations of useful text that could be used to get the previously mentioned "offsets" for mods and cheats.
Second, some kind of "TCLS Proxy" fails to initialize upon opening the game, which causes the game to close itself immediately after the intro finishes playing. My current goal is to either circumvent this initialization check using a custom patch made for the game or to somehow make this proxy work.
And last, (this one pisses me off the most) they published the game as a 32-bit application, instead of the modern 64-bit standard. Most Unreal Engine modding tools exclusively support the 64-bit standard, because it is set by default in new projects in Unreal and, sure enough, most popular and even niche games use it, but Tencent, of course, had to change this one setting and make my life infinitely harder. To my understanding, this choice was made so that Transformers Online can support older computers running outdated systems such as Windows 7 or Windows Vista, BUT STILL TENCENT FUCK YOU!!
I discovered which part of the code is responsible for detecting modifications to the executable and most files. I will be attempting to patch this code in order to circumvent this check, so I can add other patches I need for the game to work into the executable. Wish me luck. After this, it will hopefully be less of a hassle to figure out what else is needed to get the game running.
Anyway, most of the work I've done between yesterday and today is behind-the-scenes, so for today's screenshots, you're getting some character models for Jazz, Sunstreaker and Optimus Prime.
Thank you for reading this far,
