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Comment by Confiks | Hacker News Reader

What a great talk. My introduction to programming as a kid was also writing Runescape bots, using some Delphi tool called SCAR [1] (together with writing plugins for my Counter Strike 1.6 server using AMX Mod X). Start at Varrock bank, wizard hut, dialogue picker, teleport, find out where you are, mine, mine, mine, teleport back, back to bank, deposit, and again.

My great essence mining bot contraption horribly broke when Runescape started randomizing all colors slightly, after making a paltry amount in dollars selling the essences.

[1] https://scar-divi.com/

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In high school I'd meet with people in the back alleyways of my school where they'd hand me stacks of cash to buy... Runescape gold that I gained from botting.

I tinkered a little with SCAR but I primarily used Powerbot. I loved hanging out on their old forum buying/selling accounts, scripts, and photoshopped signatures.

I also got into programming through this scene, though a little later (irc.rizon.net #rsbotjava around 2008). I had already been doing a little coding but couldn't come up with decent project ideas (other than games, which always stalled out because I didn't know any artists or how to collaborate online). The RS scene was a perfect combination of interesting programming challenges, a decent size community of mostly other teenagers to hang out with, and getting to see my programs working in a "real" (virtual, ha) world. I learned about JVM internals, compiler techniques, IDEs, GUI programming with Swing, version control...... I don't know if I would have chosen CS as my major and gone into programming professionally if it weren't for this game and the community around it.

Yep I got started with programming with SCAR and on srl-forums with SRL as well. Was really fun.

Same, but on Kaitnieks/Sythe. Really fond memories of those communities ~2004-2007.

I don't think anyone has written online about what these communities were like and how interesting they were. I should do it!

Definitely do so, please! I happened to stumble upon Sythe more than a decade ago but never participated.

Wow I'd forgotten some of this. SCAR, Simba, Villavu forums.

Using SCAR and making bots was my intro to SVN and the concept of importable libraries made by others.

Simpler times. Happier times.

Gonna shoot my shot here

Does anyone remember an article titled "We are the hunted"? I couldn't manage to find it anywhere, live or archived.

Essentially it was about how the ethos of one of those communities (It was Simba when I was around), was not to spam mass bald lvl 3 bots, but to blend in and be essentially undetectable, that the goal was not unsophisticated money but something else.

I really vaguely remember this one. I think the reason it might not be archived is it was behind a sign-in on srl-forums.

I'm going to try to find it and get back to you.

All I was able to find is that "we are the hunted" was a slogan/tagline on the site back in the day!

it’ll be our little lost media

This one by chance? https://web.archive.org/web/20240505033302/https://villavu.c...

There are a few of these history-posts, mostly not lost I don't think, but can be hard to dig up. The old forum is not online very often any more. Most posts including members+ are archived here https://blandtoo.ben.land/srl/

Do you have the raw data for this export? The forum post lists on the site don't seem to have all the historical content so I can browse.

I do not, sorry, if you go to the bare domain there's contact info for the guy who does

Not an article, but it does seem to be the mission statement.

"To blend in among fellow players, cloaked and in disguise; without anybody noticing or rejecting our presence. We fulfill an intellectual challenge; a fun game of cat and mouse. We are the hunted of over three years."

https://web.archive.org/web/20090402125324/http://villavu.co...

Wow, same! Seeing SCAR and AMX Mod X just unlocked some memories.

I remember using it to chop wood. Thought it was so crazy cool that you could do that. Stopped as I didn’t wanna get banned. I was also afraid of the ent that would kill you if you weren’t paying attention. This was also the time where your axe head would randomly fall off.

Same here! In university I was studying under a different major, but started dabbling with writing a bot when OSRS came out based on my HS programming experience, and decided hey this is cool why not switch to CS? 10 years later and here I still am (though I've left the OSRS vice well behind me)

> My introduction to programming as a kid was also writing Runescape bots

4th for that! Although screen scraping always infuriated me, so I spent most of my time writing bots for decompiled RS clients.

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