Okay, so I wanted to keep track of how many players were active in a game I’m messing with, “Val.” Seemed simple enough, right? Count ’em up!
First, I poked around the game files a bit, trying to find some obvious text file or something that just listed the players. No luck there. It’s all compiled and packed tight. So, that was a dead end.
Next, I thought, “Maybe there’s some in-game command?” Like, you type something in the chat and it spits out the player count. I Googled around, checked forums, asked in a few Discord servers. Nothing. Apparently, that’s not a thing you can just do in-game. Bummer.
Sniffing Around the Network
Since the easy ways weren’t working, I figured I’d have to get my hands dirty. I grabbed Wireshark, a tool that lets you see all the network traffic going in and out of your computer. I figured the game has to be sending that player count information somewhere, right?
I fired up Wireshark, started capturing packets, and then launched “Val.” My screen filled up with a TON of data. It was like drinking from a firehose! So much gibberish. I filtered the traffic to just show stuff related to the game’s server IP addresses (which I found by looking at the game’s process in Task Manager… another little trick). Still a lot of data.
I played a few matches, keeping an eye on the Wireshark capture. I was looking for anything that looked like a repeating pattern, something that changed when the number of players in a match changed. I looked for numbers around 10 (since that is a common number for Val), but with a bunch of attempts, I still cannot find anything.
Giving Up (For Now)
Honestly, after a few hours of staring at network packets, I threw in the towel. It’s possible the player count is encrypted, or sent in some weird format I couldn’t figure out. It’s also possible it’s not even sent to the client at all! Maybe the server keeps that info to itself.
So, yeah, my grand plan to easily track “Val” player counts? Didn’t work. But hey, I learned a bit more about network sniffing, even if I didn’t get the result I wanted. Sometimes, you just gotta admit defeat and move on to the next project. Maybe I’ll revisit this later with some fresh eyes, but for now, I’m calling it quits.
